.tel .mobi can you hear me now?

[movingconcierge]

Or should I say .tel and .mobi naysayers can you hear me now? I have numerous .mobi names and several .tel names. A chief criticism of .mobi and .tel has been monetization. Well, ladies and gentlemen, allow me to introduce you to the end of the monetization argument.

Pooptooth Blog | Blog Archive | .tel .mobi can you hear me now?

What a great business model. I can't wait to see how it evolves.

If you found this article helpful, please stumble and digg it. Thanks.

To the naysayers, let's have an open debate about how this new monetization model will make mobile only sites more or less viable. Let's not rehash old arguments. mmmkay?

 

[Smith]

pay per call isn't anything new, it's been around for years.

Honestly in my opinion the argument that monetization options are a factor in valuation is way off point. There will always be ways to monetize visitors, existing and new, the real issue is with obtaining the visitors in the first place. These names get virtually no type in traffic so all that leaves is SEO development / traditional advertising models, that makes them as valuable as any other random extension, and .tel is possibly worth less.

 

[DubDubDubDot]

This seems mixed up and I don't understand what you meant by this:
"The biggest hurdle is that merchants really love the fact that affiliates are sending person to person phone transactions and they don't have to pay for those affiliate sales."

Can you clarify what you mean?

Affiliates getting paid for the sales they send is dependent upon accurate tracking by the affiliate program. Unfortunately a lot of them use all sorts of little tricks to get out of paying for affiliate sales.

The telephone order is the most innocent looking way of dodging affiliate payments. It isn't tracked, the affiliate gets nothing and merchants use the excuse that they can't track call in sales. Believe me, the affiliate programs aren't looking for a way to fix this either.

 

[plaggypig]

The telephone order is the most innocent looking way of dodging affiliate payments. It isn't tracked, the affiliate gets nothing and merchants use the excuse that they can't track call in sales. Believe me, the affiliate programs aren't looking for a way to fix this either.

Of course you can track phone calls. Tracking actual sales is harder, but solvable, however ultimately you're relying upon the advertiser to report honestly. You can detect fraud by looking at the average number of leads across all (similar) advertisers V the number of sales and root out the ones with an abnormally low ratio.

 

[DubDubDubDot]

Honestly in my opinion the argument that monetization options are a factor in valuation is way off point.

I disagree. The ability to monetize is clearly the driving factor in most domain's value. The exception being pure brandables and premium names where the buyer has their own product to sell. But once you get down into affiliate webmaster level domains (which is like 99.9% of domains), the health of that affiliate industry segment plays a role.

 

[labrocca]

"Track calls like clicks. Easy to get started. Simple to use." is their slogan. I don't see how it could be any more relevant to mobile websites, really.

Interesting because I don't see a connection at all. Cell phones are not VOIP based...unless someone is using a SKYPE application. This isn't a service for "Pay Per Call" but instead a tracking method for an ancient sales method (telemarketing). I don't see the tel/mobi relationship at all.

 

[movingconcierge]

Got it. Thanks for you further explanation.

Affiliates getting paid for the sales they send is dependent upon accurate tracking by the affiliate program. Unfortunately a lot of them use all sorts of little tricks to get out of paying for affiliate sales.

The telephone order is the most innocent looking way of dodging affiliate payments. It isn't tracked, the affiliate gets nothing and merchants use the excuse that they can't track call in sales. Believe me, the affiliate programs aren't looking for a way to fix this either.

 

[Archangel]

My arguement is simply: .mobi isn't established & isn't developed often enough for most ppl to even know the ext exists. This could benefit existing .mobi sites but that's the extent. And .tel doesn't have much monetization potential :p

 

[saucey]

True, but the brains of baby-boomers and internet users over 40 are not past phonebook level, and crave a central database similar to the tree-killing phone books of yesteryear. Yellowpages.com and other yellow.whatever "phonebooks" suck with outdated, inaccurate info. Yes, you can provide contact information in any extension, but the thought of a default database for email addresses, web addresses, street addresses, phone numbers, and other contact info doesn't strike me as a waste. If I'm not looking for a company's website, but merely their phone number or fax number, I'd like to know I can find it at their respective .tel, instead of having to google it on my shitty little mobile phone.

Whidh is exactly why I reg'd.. Pages.tel

Subdomains? .... oh...I dunno... maybe... Yellow.Pages.tel, or White.Pages.tel, or Blue.Pages.tel, or Realestate.Pages.tel... or..????

Sitting tight for now... hope it all works out for .tel!