Internet Marketing

Who are they?

To quote from their website:

GBBO is a joint initiative by Google, Enterprise UK, BT, e-skills UK and many other partners to help small businesses create their first website and help them understand the opportunities offered by the Internet. We've set a target of helping 100,000 UK organisations get their first website easily and for free by the end of 2010.

In other words, some large organizations and some industry led groups

Follow up:

What would I get?

Most important is that you get your business a .co.uk domain name which is yours for free for two years. After two years, the renewal fee is payable to BT but it did look reasonable based on current rates

You get access to Google Apps which includes mail on your domain name for up to (I think) 50 users plus all the other things that are in Apps

Google Sites is there to use for making web pages which might well be enough to get a start in your online business.

What is the catch?

The obvious one is that you must be a British business to benefit from the offer but that does not exclude people who are just starting up.

Using Google Sites and Google Apps may not suit all but it might work for you.

The initial setup does not allow for the installation of anything like Wordpress onto the domain. This can be changed but it needs a separate webspace account to host the software. It is also not possible to make changes to domain records manually as they have to be done by email request.

Is it worth it?

That is something that only you can decide but a free .co.uk domain name and webspace and email and more does seem a pretty good deal. Yes, you are likely to outgrow what is on offer but it does seem a good way for us Brits to get started

OK, where is it?