But this comes at a cost. While signing up for a .co.uk these days can be done for a paltry £1.99 per year (plus Vat) to become a .scot will cost you £24.99 before Vat – that’s £29.99 per year all in.
Thus the canny Scot can be priced out of the market. It’s such a shame. When the .scot domain was first announced I was going to change all the domain extensions I’m associated with from the hated co.uk (which I took because at the time they were cheaper than .com by some 10x) to .scot. And maybe if we’d have got independence I would have done so. But to be asked to pay over 12 times the price just to use the extension .scot – well, doesn’t it prove I’m Scottish that the figures didn’t add up for me on that one?
Idly, I wonder why no one has come up with the .nb (North British) domain extension. In the 19th century some Scots writers used to put N.B on their address title and they didn’t mean Nota Bene. I often wonder whether this showed their allegiance to Britain or was a ‘Saor Alba’ moment of irony. I guess we’ll never know.
But there’s more. Before they’ll sell you a ridiculously overpriced .scot domain, you also, by the way, have to ‘prove’ that you are a legitimate Scot. You do this by filling in a form which indicates your reasons for choosing a .scot domain, and doubtless there are all kinds of dire penalties if you misinform the authorities. This is ridiculous. Why would anyone want a .scot domain (and to pay the premium for it) unless they had a legitimate reason to use .scot over all. Are there all kinds of bandits out to exploit ‘Brand Scotland?’ It doesn’t bear thinking about. Should I google porn.scot I wonder? Have we signed up to something which will be more ill fated than the Darien Adventure?
As it is, when we were setting up McRenegades we mulled long and hard over whether we should pay the premium to be .scot. We decided to go for it, if only so that I could publish this post explaining about the iniquities of the system to all our potential new readers.
It’s a perfect example of how one always has to be aware of the behind the scenes ‘happenings’ in our daily lives, and I can assure you that in the weeks and months ahead, our McRenegade view of publishing and indeed the very world we live in, will bring you more such stories. You don’t have to look far to see that the ordinary person, the one who falls outside the mainstream model, is generally kicked in the nuts on a regular basis. That’s what McRenegades is about. Standing up for ourselves. Not fighting the system, that’s pointless – they have all the power and the money – but voicing our own opinions and living life our own way – I call it the Our Way Too philosophy (OW2). That’s my own unique view of things and other McRenegades have their own views. The thing about McRenegades is that it’s a place FOR these divergent views. A place well out of the mainstream, which will never strive to trend on Twitter or win awards or prizes. But a place of value all the same. To those of us with more on our minds than selling out fast and getting rich quick.
Now of course, we all know that domain names are something of a rip off – it’s been so since the beginning, when folk used to buy up all kinds of names and sell them back to the legitimate people who ran businesses with those names at inflated prices. I guess it’s just another example of the Free Market Economy. But it sits a bit uneasily with me that we have to thole this just to be able to show that we are Scottish in origin.
One consolation is that as far as I can see, it’s obviously better to be a Scot than almost anything else – by extension. The only one I’ve found more expensive is .expert which will set you back £34.99 (before Vat) It’s good to know we Scots are at the top of the table for something and as we languish at the bottom of the Six Nations table it may make us momentarily happy to know that you can pick up a .wales extension for a mere £9.99. A .london will set you back £19.99 (all prices need 20% VAT added on because we are, of course, still Better Together when it comes to VAT)
No one values .co.uk any more it seems. The extension is past its sell by date, being flogged out at the cheapest deal of £1.99. Only the likes of Weebly extensions (which are free) are lower. And when I think about it, I’d rather be an extension of Weebly than .co.uk these days. Used to be .co.uk gave you a ring of economic authenticity. But now, with .me, .net, .org all coming in at £9.99 there’s so many options it makes your head birl. .uk is a mere £5.99. Now many of us will agree that being a .scot is more than four times better than being a .uk but WHY OH WHY are we having to pay so much to make our point?
I should maybe find a .guru site to explain it to me. They are the same ‘value’ as a .scot extension.
Can it simply be that people are profiteering on our patriotism? For me, at the moment, it feels like I’ve just paid £30 to write this blog post. So how’s that for starters? McRengades has given you a blog post worth £30 FOR FREE.
Only time will tell if the gamble pays off. But we’d be interested to hear your feedback on the whole .scot extension scandal. Did we waste our money?
Kirsty Eccles