Update : Link to the DN Registration Forms

Today’s post is a slight diversion from the usual website reviews, I thought maybe today I should be a bit more informative rather than critical. So having had to register a .co.bw domain name in the past, I thought it might be useful to some people who may want a .bw domain name.

.bw is the top level domain (TLD) for internet domain names in Botswana and the Botswana Telecommunications Corporation(BTC) are the authority over the .bw domain space. So this means that, if you want to register a domain name that ends with .bw you’ve got to get in touch with BTC, fill in some forms and wait for them to do their “magic”.

Unfortunately, you cannot check for the availability of your .bw domain name online, BTC does not have that facility just yet, so you have to do some paperwork to get your .bw registered.

The domain registration form provided by BTC is quite easy to fill in I must say, the good thing is that it has some pretty nicely written and straight forward instructions annexed to the form.

The following information is required to fill the form

1. The domain name you want to register [obvious, isn't it?], unfortunately, at the moment there’s no way of automatically checking whether the domain name is available for registration or not.
2. Domain Nameservers  and their IP addresses, you need at least the primary and the secondary nameservers which you can easily get from your prospective webhosting companies like Bluehost, Godaddy, Fastdomain, 1and1, Dotster, Fasthosts etc.
3. Money talks and it makes the world go round; the cost of a commercial or personal .bw domain name at the time of writing this article was BWP 500.00 for 2 years (roughly USD 35.00/year) which is rather expensive I have to say. Given that you can quite easily get a more popular .com domain name for as low as USD 8/year.
4. Apparently, the registration of a .org.bw domain name is free, I learnt this from one of my colleagues who was registering the domain name for the Botswana Scripture Union website- subotswana.org.bw (which “Dot-T Enterprise Systems & Solutions) ” are developing kindly developing free as well ;-))

The domain registration forms are not available for download from the BTC website however,  but I do have a copy of the form, will just confirm with the guys at BTC whether I won’t be on the red if I redistribute it. I’ll put the link to the form here in due course if I get the all clear from BTC.

Other places where you can apparently register a .co.bw domain name

BNamed

Marcaria - for a whooping $280.00 (that’s way too expensive)

Earlier today, I was helping my girlfriend register a domain name, miss-networks.com ; a blog for her for her CCNP certification course; At first we wanted her to register the name with Go Daddy.com for the obvious reason that they seemed cheaper.

We also tried 1 and 1 UK Ltd for the same reason as Go daddy’s (link on the right) but their .com prices were a little bit too high for her budget, around £8.99 compared to the £5.95 which she ended up paying from dotex hosts. The biggest turn off with Godaddy was the prolonged checking out process, with every step of the process suggesting “additional domains and services” which we were not interested in.

I know, back in the days of Amway, my upline always emphasised that I have to say, Keep It So Simple but hey, Keep it Simple and Stupid; I mean the check out process of course. Trying to be intricate and overly intelligent is just another way to say to tell your potential customers to go find the services somewhere else.

The morale of my story from experience with Godaddy is; If you are running an online business,

1. Make the checkout process as short as possible and
2. Keep It So Simple so that even the granny at home can go through it without having to call “Bob the Whizkid” for help.

It was really annoying so much that in the end, we ended up registering the domain name from dotexhosts webhosting solutions because the prices we had to pay for the .com domain name was pretty much the same anyway.

How about getting paid for doing what you already do on a daily basis the only requirement being to change “WHERE” you have been searching?

The percentage of Internet users who use search engines on a typical day has been steadily rising from about one-third of all users in 2002, to a new high of just under one-half (49 percent).
CircleID

Homepages Friends operates a shared revenue model where the money they earn through paid search they split with the users 50/50; The search services are offered by Yahoo, so effectively, you will be searching using Yahoo Search through a page like the one shown below.

I guess this will in the long term increase the usage of Yahoo Search Engine, whether that’s the motive behind the scheme, I do not know but it definitely will be a side effect nevertheless.

The use of Yahoo also means that, you can expect the same quality of search results as you would expect from yahoo.com search engine.

How does Homepages Friends paid search work?

1. You simply Sign Up for the service Free of charge through this affiliate link, or if you do not want “us” to be in the same “team”, you can join directly through http://www.myhpf.co.uk/apply001.asp.
2. Once you confirm your email address, you can either 1. Add http://www.myhpf.co.uk/mypage.asp?OrgID=yourID to your list of search providers in your browser or 2. Set that page to be your homepage or just add it to one of your bookmarks, but I guess making it your home page makes it easily accessible.
3. Every time you want to search you simply search through the search provider or the homepage you set up in Step 2 above. Both IE7 and Mozilla Firefox are supported, so I think that covers majority of Internet users.
4. You earn money every time you search through a page similar to the one below. [Please be honorable, and perform legitimate searches]

   

How do you get Paid?

Payment is through paypal or straight into your bank account as soon as your accumulated revenue reaches £20.00. You can increase the revenue you earn by referring friends, family, acquaitainces etc.

You can also monitor your earnings through your account page which shows you

• number of searches made
• amount earned through those searches
• accumulated revenue
• and many other; you can simply join to see what information you can also track through the account page.

Joining Homepages Friends

You can join by clicking this Affiliate Link or use the direct link I posted above. Once you have joined and have set up your browser as previously explained, you can start making every search count.

PS.
I do recommend however that, you do not perform “fake searches” just for the sake of increasing your earnings. Search as you normally would but this time around, use the new revenue earning search engine.

Thanks for reading my blog. Till next time

Thapelo

This is the beginning of a new series in which I will be reviewing websites for Botswana companies and the government departments including other stakeholders and service providers e.g. BTC, BPC etc in Botswana. If you have any other website for a company or organisation in Botswana that you would like to see a review of, feel free to leave a comment below.

This week I will be starting with mti.gov.bw

Overview

The website runs on a rather dated version of Mambo content management system (CMS) and seems to have been around since 2003, at least that’s the impression we get based on the copyright and privacy text at the footer of the page.
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From their website, they say

Qassia is a credit-driven intelligence engine coupled to a cascading tag-based directory.

Qassia enables you to promote your blog, business or company website by simply contributing to the Qassia community through what they call Intel(ligence).

What is Intel?

Intel is basically just your contribution either by writing a piece about yourself, company, friends;your dog, a tree you saw on your way to work, review of some software application, or your chair; you can pretty much write about anything. What’s cool about it is that, you can contribute your already published blog posts as Intel to Qassia and earn some credit.

This can also be information that you have “legal” write to re-publish or redistribute which can then earn you substantial Qassia credit.

What’s in it for you?

When you contribute Intel, your account is credited with “Qassia dollars” which obviously is a fictitious currency meaning, you cannot “withdraw” it or use it to buy service, products. Among others, you get the following benefits:
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