So, you’ve got yourself a domain. Sure, it helps people get to your website, but what else can you use it for? Google’s got the answer. Do you hate your webhost’s webmail program? Do you like GMail? Well, now you can have your own copy of GMail (with 100 free email accounts)….but at your own domain. That’s right, you can have your own mini-GMail with email addresses resembling you@yourdomain.com. You get more than just email, but the email’s the best part. Forget your host’s SquirrelMail system, switch to Google Apps.

The web keeps changing. This site is a list of URL redirection services, complete with reviews. Not a bad site to check out if you’re starting a website with a $0 budget (oh, come on! Domains are only $7/year!).

I’ve used Smartdots in the past (Now I use subdomains of my short domain, NTugo.com [[evil laughter]]). You get a redirect like you.net.tc absolutely free. No catch at all*.

*All right, the catch is that parts of the page need to be translated to English still. You can use Google Translation to translate automatically by cutting and pasting, though.

By default, Smartdots tries to force ads on your visitors, though you can turn them off, luckily.

Just put a button on your main page (home page, not splash screen) and you can get a subdomain like you.biz.ly and unlimited 4th-level domains like forum.you.biz.ly. Best of all, you get to chose from DNS or redirection! This means you can point your host’s DNS servers to it instead of your page loading into a frame of biz.ly’s. Cool or what? Nic.Biz.Ly sets itself apart from other URL redirection services by offering such a cool feature.

Dot.tk is a free URL redirection service with an interesting history. A small country/island decided that they didn’t need their top-level domains (.tk). So now they offer a free URL redirect service, or for $12/year you can actually buy the actual domain and use it with your DNS server. At last check, the redirect service displays a splash page where you have to click”continue to site,” before viewing your site. For that reason, I’m not a big fan of Dot.tk. The address looks like www.you.tk.