We are often asked about what domain extensions are available, and there’s actually a lot more of them than you might imagine. Although some have some specific uses, such as .travel for tourism related websites and .biz domains for businesses, the vast majority of domain extensions are country related, such as .uk for the United Kingdom and .ie for Ireland.

In the same way that the countries of the world change over time, so do domain extensions, with Yugoslav (.yu) domains being largely replaced with domain extensions for the newly created countries which were formed from the break-up of Yugoslavia such as .si for Slovenia and the upcoming .me extension for Montenegro. Then there are extensions which are just created as the need arises such as the .eu extension for the European Union which has been live for a few years. A complete list of the domain extensions currently approved by ICANN along with links to the various registry sites is available at:

http://www.norid.no/domenenavnbaser/domreg.en.html

Many domain registries have specific rules on who can register a certain domain and sometimes restrictions on what type of site it must be, or in the case of .mobi domains how the site should be visible to users and on what type of devices. Some registries issue domains rather than allow them to be registered at all such as .mil for US Military websites, and some will only allow the person who wishes to own the domain to register it directly with the registry. Others insist you are a resident of the country involved before you can register a domain with them. In essence, each domain registry is free to make up its own rules and regulations on what can be registered and who can register them.

As you can see that makes it very difficult, if not impossible, for us to be able to register some domain extensions, but that does not mean that we cannot host them. Providing customers can register the domain involved themselves and have it placed onto our nameservers, we can host any domain extension with the use of a domain reference on any paid-for hosting account and the nameservers to use are listed in our Support Database.

Heart Internet gives it’s customers a helping hand to make money online from advertising by allowing you to easily install an ad server from our CGI script library onto your website. OpenAds is a feature rich advertisement suite allowing webmasters to easily incorporate banner advertisements onto your website with minimal effort.

Below is a helpful guide on ways you can make money from your website through advertising.
 

Direct Banner Advertising

Graphical banner advertisements tend to be very effective and as a result a great source of revenue. As you will be in complete control of who is advertising, you essentially eliminate the middle-man allowing you to keep 100% of the profits. It’s not as easy as using Advertising Programs such as Google Adsense, who take care of the selling for you, it’s completely down to you to contact potential advertisers and convince them why they should advertise on your website. When approaching advertisers it’s a good idea to present to them reasons why they should advertise on your website. Good traffic statistics, including page views and unique visitors, will help your cause. Try and give as much positive information as you can. It’s also worth adding an “Advertise” link on your website, allowing people to easily enquire about advertising rates, opening up the opportunity to make a sale.

The following is a list of the most popular banner sizes used:

Horizontal:
Leader board: 728 x 90 pixels
Full Banner:  468 x 60 pixels
Half Banner: 234 x 60 pixels

Vertical:
Skyscraper:  120 x 600 pixels
Wide Skyscraper: 160 x 600 pixels

Rectangle:
Standard Rectangle:  180 x 150 pixels
Large Rectangle:  336 x 280 pixels
 
CPC (Cost-Per-Click) Advertising Programs

 There are many CPC advertising programs available on the internet, the most popular is Google Adsense (http://www.google.com/adsense/).  Adsense serves advertisements onto your website that are targeted to the content of each page, having relevant ads will result in a higher click-through rate. It’s good practice to have ads that blend into the content of your website as they will appear more natural and increase the chances of visitors clicking them. Google Adsense allows you to customise the ads to your needs - including the size and format, e.g. text, image or video and link colours. Should you get unwanted advertisements appearing on your website, Adsense has a competitive ad filter so you can block certain sites from showing. Adsense is a very easy way to make money from your website as it requires minimal effort to setup and it takes care of displaying relevant advertisements for you.

Affiliate Schemes

You can also make money from your website by joining an affiliate program where you can earn commissions by referring visitors to a website where they perform certain actions, e.g. purchase a product.  Heart Internet offers an affiliate program allowing you to earn a 10% commission on all domain and hosting sales that where referred from your website.

For more information or to sign up as a Heart Internet Affiliate and start making money, click the link below:
http://www.heartinternet.co.uk/blog/2008/05/affiliate-scheme/

OpenAds Support
Should you need any help with your installation of OpenAds please visit the official support site

Support Page:
http://www.openx.org/support

Forum:
http://forum.openx.org/

We’ve been reviewing our affiliate scheme against the competition and believe we have the leading scheme in the industry. With the Heart Internet scheme you can earn 10% commission on all domain and hosting sales by referring new customers online.

Enrolling in our affiliate scheme is free of charge and we supply a range of banner and button sizes to place on your Website. When a visitor to your website clicks on any of these banners they are sent to our website and a special piece of information is stored on their computer (called a cookie). Cookies are used by many companies, including Microsoft, Amazon and Argos, so are widely accepted by computer users. The cookie stores your affiliate ID so that when that customer places an order for services from our website we know that the customer came from you.

Once an order is placed we automatically credit your account with 10% commission for web hosting and domain names from that sale. As long as you reach £15 by the end of the month we will automatically credit the amount you have earned to your bank account. If you don’t earn £15 in a given month we simply keep carrying this amount over until you reach £15.

To join simply login to your account/sign up for a new account and click the “Affiliate Link” once you have logged in.