I receive a fair bit of feedback both good and bad about my business, my intentions and motives. I embrace this feedback and use it to try and improve my business in every way. Don’t get me wrong, sometimes I read criticism and it completely floors me. I sit on it for a few days then I try and figure out the best way to tackle it. A few years ago I would probably not have handled criticism too well (especially when people second-guess my motives) and I may have thrown my hands in the air and given up. Not today! Today I choose to use feedback, good and bad to improve the business. So to all you Ninjas and Foxes out there (I know you will find this post because you have spent a huge amount of time already sifting through my business and have taken the time to give me feedback one way or another) I wonder if is in your nature to forensically examine us or if you are not Australian and do not understand how patriotic or loyal Australian’s are.
The most common theme is the fact that .au domains must be purchased by people with legitimate ABN’s, ACN’s or business numbers. Let’s talk about that.
auDA, the Australian Domain name Administrator, sets policies governing who is eligible to register an .au domain name. The requirements for a .com.au are set out below.
.com.au domain names can be registered by Australian registered businesses. .com.au registrants must be;
- an Australian registered company; or
- trading under a registered business name in any Australian State or Territory; or
- an Australian partnership or sole trader;
- a foreign company licensed to trade in Australia; or
- an owner of an Australian Registered Trade Mark; or
- an applicant for an Australian Registered Trade Mark; or
- an association incorporated in any Australian State or Territory; or
- an Australian commercial statutory body.
Points 1, 2, 3, 7 and 8 are fairly straight forward – you must be an Australian registered business, incorporation or statutory body.
Point 4 – A foreign Company that is licensed to trade in Australia. So does that mean that they operate their business from overseas, but are allowed to sell goods and services within Australia?
Points 5 and 6 – An individual person can register a Trade Mark. So an individual can purchase the .au.
So in conclusion to the .au debate it is safe to say that anyone (including overseas traders and individuals who do not have a registered business) can successfully purchase the .au in Australia under the auDA’s guidelines.
The second biggest query to me is Australian banking as one of our requirements for certification. Let’s talk about that also.
Who owns that bank is not an issue, so first and foremost let’s put that one aside! We are talking about off-shore banking. An example of this may be “payments can be made to our bank account. Bank of Canada account number 123 456 789”. This to me is an off-shore bank and is not acceptable in our terms and conditions. If a person has to complete an international bank transfer to pay for their goods or services, this is not banking within Australia.
Websites that use PayPal as a payment method is fine. PayPal works closely with the Australian Government and ATO to ensure that people earning money through PayPal are declaring their income for tax reasons and are legitimate traders.
How many domains are registered in the world?
According to Domain Tools, there are a total of 122,205,781 active domains right now and 386,179,352 deleted domains right now. Those statistics only include .com, .net, .org, .info, .biz and .us – so that does not include any .au domains. I chose to add these statistics as many Australian websites are listed with these suffixes as the .au may be too expensive, or people would much prefer the .com, .net etc. Many “Australian” search engines and directories only list sites with .au – so websites that include the suffixes above miss out on being listed in such directories or searches. It is unknown how many websites are actually registered within Australia.
To put it simply someone from China (for example) could register a .com, the domain could include the words Australia, Aussie, Oz (for example), the site could have an Australian flag proudly displayed, and they could have Sydney, Australia listed as their location. On the outside, this looks to be an Australian owned and operated website, but sadly it is not.
While some people do not care where their money goes, who they employ for a service or where their products are coming from a large amount of Australian’s do care and would prefer to keep their money in Australia and support our own economy and I personally are the biggest supporter of that.
Australian Certified Website was developed so Australian consumers, like myself have a trusted source to find websites that have been more than happy to identify themselves and want to make themselves visible to people who only want to deal with Australian websites.
Supporting Australia
I, like many Australian’s do like to support Australia. There are many businesses and organisations that are dedicated to single out Australian products, Australian businesses, Australian-Made products, Australian-Grown produce and they have all have the same goals as I do – to showcase Australia’s best assets! I am certain at some point some of these organisations were criticised about their motives especially in their early days where people would have asked the question “why should we care if it is Australian made?” my answer: because cheap knock-offs that have the words Australian Made (and aren’t) are being sold to consumers who think that they are buying Australian. The very iconic Australian Made logo regulates this and if the products in question are not Australian Made they are not entitled to use the trusted logo.
Other Australian campaigns like our certification, businesses and people have the right to choose if they want to be included. If a website chooses to let the Australian community know that they are Australian so be it. It was their choice to make and at the end of the day when Australian consumers decide that they want to support Australia via the online community the included websites will be found.
In Australia we celebrate “Australia Day” because we are proud to be Australian.
In Australia we support each other. There are hundreds of “shop locally” campaigns in almost every town and city to encourage sustainable growth in our economy.
In Australia we are trusting and have been conned out of our hard earned money. Australian’s lost an estimated $70 million dollars in 2009 and a huge amount of that was attributed to overseas scams. Many Australian’s have lost confidence online because they have been scammed or they know someone who has been scammed.
You can choose to argue the point but there has been a flurry of campaigns politically, governmentally and individually that are working their hardest to decrease this astonishing figure.
While we cannot stop internal or overseas scams, our priority is to give Australian consumers a place to look for Australian owned and operated websites if they choose to do so.
Another comment that I recently received was quote:
“great idea – great way to earn money, I wish I had of thought of it myself. Nice little earner”
Fox Everything-threed I am glad you didn’t think of it yourself, maybe your intentions and motives may have differed from mine.
“big deal – apply, meet a few criteria and pay your money – bingo. Trademarks are a dime a dozen”
Fox, firstly this is a big deal and we do a lot more than accept money and hand out our Trade Mark. There have been many unsuccessful applications for our certification because they simply did not meet our criteria. Secondly I agree, Trade Marks are a dime a dozen – that is why we took our Trade Mark further and had it registered as a Certification Trade Mark (CTM). Our terms and conditions had to be approved by the ACCC – that is what makes our certification worth more than a simple Trade Mark.
“All – read EVERY dot AU site HAS TO BE OWNED AND OPERATED BY AN AUSTRALIAN – try and get an au domain without having an ABN, registered business or registered company in Australia – you cannot – impossible !!!”
Fox, I think I covered that in my first point and clearly pointed out that it is in fact not impossible.
Import / Export
Australia has built itself on exports and Australian’s have some of the best inventive minds of the world. We do not care if goods are imported or exported as long as it is done within the law. I have never singled out people who import however websites who are drop shipping agents will not be accepted.
“So why would I spend money to have my dot au sites validated as being Australian owned? So because a legitimate Australian owned business actually brings in product from overseas to supply a customer then they are not a certifiable site – probably why Harvey Norman and many other reputable Australian retailers haven’t bothered to become certified”.
Our terms and conditions state that we will not accept websites who do not store their products within Australia or act as agents for drop shippers. Why would you spend money to have your sites validated? Why wouldn’t you? I could understand if your website did not meet our criteria!
Certification Fees
I do not receive government funding, I do not receive donations or memberships and I do not receive sponsorship nor did I “raise revenue” to get it started. The business is 100% funded out of my own pocket. I have spent thousands of dollars to date and I will continue to spend money to keep this business going. The certification fees that were received to date were spent on a television commercial that we ran in August 2010 – to promote certified sites to consumers. All revenue through this business goes back into the business, not into my pocket.
In closing, I welcome your feedback (good and bad) as I can continually improve this business and grow this business to achieve the only goal we have – to give people who choose to support Australia within the online community a place to find Australian owned and operated websites.
If you have any feedback please email me directly admin@australiancertified.com.au or for the cost of a local call you can phone me on 1300 872 665, I would love to have a chat!
If you support Australia and please let others know about Australian Certified Website and our growing community!
