Launching an online presence can be useful for up-and-coming comedians - or give a bad impression.

One problem with the wonderfully varied world of the modern web is keeping up with everything. Obviously you can't be expected to read the whole internet - even Eddie Izzard wouldn't take on that marathon - but just staying on top of your own online stuff can be taxing. Which platforms should you focus on?

Twitter makes sense, of course, but a lot of comics also use Facebook to get a bit more in-depth with friends and colleagues, and then there's Instagram for the selfie-lovers, and others: but do you then link them all up, so new posts go to everything? And what about your own website? It's worth having a good think about what you're really going to keep using, longer-term. If you decide to roll the dice by launching a proper web presence, then you really need to throw all your cards at it, and go all-in. Because anything half-cocked can be counter-productive.

Now a decent website can definitely give a winning impression, whether it's for a new company, an online casino, or an up-and-coming performer. The opposite is one that has lapsed altogether: they betted on having the time and funds to keep it going, but lost the domain name. So when you try to click through to find out what exciting things that act is up to, you get a 'Page Not Found' or a 'This Domain is Available!' notice - it's never a good look.

Letting your website lapse is easily done, in truth, as social media accounts are usually are a lot quicker and easier to update, for those who don't dig web design. But a lot of us will still try the proper web link first, if there is one, and there are certain comics who still have links on their social media outlets to a defunct website and a holding page that basically tells you 'this guy didn't pay his bill.'

Say you're a club promoter looking to check out a potential performer: land on their lapsed webpage and you'll probably wonder if something's gone a bit wrong somewhere, and whether he or she will actually turn up. That's a bit unfair of course, but a website is often the first big gateway you get to give a good impression, and that's not a great one.

But it's the same the other way around: if you run a comedy club and you've lost your website by forgetting or just not bothering to pay the bill, it hardly plants the idea that you'll be a prompt payer if, say, you're trying to book a decent-sized headliner. If you were the performer in question, would you take the risk of taking that trip? What if they haven't paid the venue's electricity bill either...?

It could be worse, of course. If your old online address now has one of those messages saying something like 'this domain is available,' someone might decide to take up the offer. Rather than just visiting a comedian's site, you could end up buying it, if you were a particularly obsessed fan, or someone with a grudge. And who knows what weird stuff would end up on it then.