A band of small islands off New-Zealand have found a unique way of marketing their Internet suffix: shortening URLs.

The Telegraph is running a great story on Tokelau, a group of Islands lost in the Pacific with very little natural resources to eek a living out of.

Until the Internet that is. The Web has opened up new opportunities for Tokelau through its own extension: .TK.

The three islands that make up Tokelau have partnered with Dutch entrepreneur Joost Zuurbier to sell .TK domains as "URL reducers". Want to link to a site or email a news story but the standard URL is too long? Simply feed it into Dot TK's URL shortening engine and a shiny (and short) .TK domain name comes out the other end.

It can be registered there and then, for free.

The scheme is so popular that up to 10,000 free .TK domains are said to be registered every day.

So how does Dot TK make money? Each time someone connects to a website through a .TK domain, web advertising is embedded in the target site.

Don't want the ads or just want a standard .TK domain that doesn't stem from a shortened URL? No problem, in that case you just buy the domain like you would under any other suffix.