I guess it depends what the nature of the business is. The aim will of course always be to go international if at all possible and if that is the case and possible then yes .com will always be the preferred choice.

In my case I got the offer to be the UK face of a brand that sells internationally. So I was allowed to call myself the brand name followed by UK despite the fact that I am just an affiliate (but allowed to be a very special affiliate) as I am allowed to represent as the UK branch of the brand and I live in the UK.

Being the face of the UK branch it therefore makes sense to have a .co.uk extension and helps to rank well locally in the UK and quite well within the rest of Europe.

I do however also try to compete internationally (and doing pretty well), but this is of course harder with a .co.uk extension.

However, despite it being digital products sold, those that live in Europe are taxed 20% on product purchases which means they have to pay 20% more for products than those living in the USA for example.

Now the way the business model works is that clients order the bespoke software from my website and pay directly to my bank account or paypal. I then order the products on behalf of the client from the software developer (the main authority branch so to speak) by using a dealers code that allows me to buy the products at a 20% discount from their website. So that means my profit margin is 20%.

Unfortunately because I live in Europe I am subject to pay 20% tax on these purchases and therefore I cannot compete with the prices the software developer charges those from outside of Europe. As an example the software developer does not charge customers from the USA 20% tax which means they get the products 20% cheaper than those customers from Europe that are subject to 20% tax.

As I am subject to pay 20% tax when ordering on behalf of the client I unfortunately do not have any other choice but to ask clients outside Europe 20% more, otherwise my profit is 0 as my profit margin is 20%.

For customers from Europe the price will be the same whether they buy directly from the software developer or buy from me.

Saying this, you will be surprised to know that I have had several clients from the USA and other countries outside of Europe buy from me despite being 20% more expensive, perhaps due to my prices being the exact same as the software developer and them not realising that the software developer does not add the 20% tax before checkout for clients outside of Europe like I am forced to do.

So in this sense I cannot really compete price wise for countries outside of Europe anyways due to our 20% tax on products charged dilemma.

So for my specific situation .co.uk is ideal.

As I am not the creator of the brand and software there is no way I will be entitled to the .com of course anyways.

I know my situation is very unique but I can think of other situations where you may wanna go local as well.

Maybe your site is to do with gardening and selling very bespoke rare and expensive plants delivered to your clients' doorstep. It may perhaps be better in this case to be an affiliate for a local gardening centre in this case. I know of one gardening centre local to me that makes an absolute fortune. Also when selling gardening equipment just maybe makes more sense to be an affiliate for big brands/shops in the UK delivering gardening tools and accessories locally.

Another scenario I can think of is when you offer to create a website for a local business in the UK for example.

My examples may not have been the best, but I guess you get the idea that local extensions may sometimes be the best choice.

In general though as an affiliate you do want to compete internationally and you ideally want that .com as you mentioned.

Hi Charles
Thank you so much for your reply. I agree about WA increasing the types of extensions that they could support. Kyle and Carson - are you taking note??

Great answer Schalk, I have previously tried to buy a .co.uk domain here but didn't think about changing the nameservers.
Don't have any at the moment but I'll bear that in mind for again👌
Mark

That's awesome! A great idea!

Hi and many thanks for your answer. I actually went ahead and bought the .com domain from WA, and the same .co.uk domain from GoDaddy (quite independently of your mentioning GoDaddy btw!), and see that if I want to transfer it to WA I have to wait a couple of months. So I've made a note in my diary to do that. I also made a point of switching off the auto renew of the GoDaddy domain, so that if for any reason I don't develop that domain here in WA, I won't get stung for a domain renewal in a year that I've forgotten about!

All the best
Alison

I am sure you can switch it straight away to WA by simply pointing to the WA name servers. Yes, if you want to in totality migrate the domain to WA then that is different. And what is up with the having to wait 2 months? Can you elaborate a bit? And can you actually migrate domains that are not .com .org or .net in its totality to WA? I did not think that was possible as WA only supports .com .org and .net

Hi Alison, in my experience GD will always send you warning emails about an impending renewal so you wouldn't need to worry about getting stung.
Mark

Hi Diane, many thanks for your reply. Ok, so I need to wait till some time in early April...

Super. Many thanks for responding to my question.