The .TEL Discussion Thread

[brendan52190]

Hi

For this, let's assume that .tel will not be a total flop.

What type of keywords will be most valuable for this extension? Will it be geographical keywords, like newyork.tel, losangeles.tel, etc, or what else?

 

[mis_chiff]

Hi Wendy

I have only just finished signing up and reading the PDF describing the platform...So I am still feeling things out... but, I am thinking it will be useful for a site such as my RentCars.tel. If people start using my site to find rental cars, and everyone of those calls are tracked and reported back to the respective rental agencies.. well, it could prove to be quite profitable..Or, at least it would seem so..

It appears that each affiliate recieves a unique phone number to advertise with... so when a customer calls using that number, CJ knows who gets paid.. at least that's how I read it. A customer could "click call" from your .tel page, or even call from a landline... as long as he or she is calling YOUR specific number, you get paid.

Thanks for the update, let us know how it goes.
Good luck

 

[Sarena]

As I've stated to a Canadian technology publication covering the .tel event in Toronto:

"A flaw-ridden attempt at creating a virtual contact card that would impress, if only it were 1994. In the days of web 2.0 and interactive social media platforms, .tel comes through as a cheap and kitschy gimmick; then again cheap and kitschy might impress the MySpace users it's purported to be targeting."

sounds like you have been around the mobi block...

my husband invested in mobi, i have the .tel .... the good thing about .tel is that you dont have to read volumes to learn to program if you just want to have a simple contact point to place in your print ads and business cards. from a sales persons perspective you can also get your clients to associate you with a .tel and then if you change companies, your clients will still know how to get ahold of you.... imho

 

[iDomainTrader]

.Tel names

I have 220 .tel names that are geo, first names. keywords and never receive an offer. Not so sure if .tel was a good investment.

 

[mis_chiff]

liming, what does .cn stats have to do with .tel?
They are not even slightly similar!

 

[MrDave]

Dub,

How about showing us the top 25 domain names in your portfolio so we can assess whether to follow your lead or do anything but.

Your domain list should tell us something about your skill as a domainer and whether or not you have an intuitive sense for this business. After reading your several months of postings, many domainers would probably be interested in seeing the domain names you've picked up along the way.

Is that too much to ask?

 

[lewisrx]

alaska.tel Auction ended on sedo at 1,050 USD

 

[CDM]

Of course they can be monetized, but the backbone of the naysayer arguments have always been how much more difficult it is on .tel compared to .com. Pay per call affiliate programs do not change that.

From the affiliate webmaster sales side, the only thing different is that you are sending referrals though a phone number rather than a URL. You still have to generate traffic to your promo sites and you still have to sell that traffic on the product. Once again, good luck doing that from a .tel profile when your competition is doing it on a .com using something more than plain text on a white background.

I know how it goes though.... "But .tel is all we need to accomplish what we want to do!" Yeah right. More like .tel is all you can figure out because you refuse to learn how to develop properly. .tel is all you've got. At least the people riding on .tel becoming a phone number alternative have something to hope for. The .tel "developers" have nothing and don't seem to realize it.

oh contraire mon frere, I just sold a .tel last week to a professional developer of iphone apps for $750. web development isnt the only thing going on these days. not a bad ROI too I might add

 

[plaggypig]

I've received tons of inquiries on my portfolio of ~50 premium category names, and most of the offers that followed were in the $5-10k range. I haven't sold any, but I've bought a few privately.

Despite my presence in this community I'm not a domain trader (I've sold 2 domains in my entire life). I own .tel domains because I intend to build, curate, craft, sculpt and develop next generation directories and services with them. I'm also developing a new kind of search engine, an advertising platform, and other tools for the telosphere.

Anyway, for the domain traders holding .tel's out there; be patient. The 'first come first serve' nature of the .tel launch was an equitable one, but in the absence of registries in cahoots with auctioneers to sell off the premium names directly, the .tel aftermarket starts from a seedling. In the long run it makes no difference price wise, but in the short term there are some amazing buying opportunities.

I think I can hear DubDubDubDot starting to hyperventilate so I'd better leave it there

 

[MicroGuy]

The terms "my sources" and "vast majority" are too vague to prove anything. An argumentum ad populum (Latin: "appeal to the people"), in logic, is a fallacious argument that concludes a proposition to be true because many or all people believe it; it alleges, "If many believe so, it is so." (from Wikipedia).

A vast majority of educated people on Earth believed the Sun revolved around the Earth until they were proved wrong by Mikolaj Kopernik. Just because everybody believes something to be true, it does not make it so.

Besides that, since you bid $210 for Alaska.tel, even you don't believe these people. Why should anyone else?

ALASKA.TEL

Estimated end time: 0 day 11 hours 28 min.
(Aug/11/09 05:34 AM EST)
Current Bid:
950 USD
Reserve met!
Bidding History (34 Bids)

From the sale of Alaska.tel, we can conclude that at this moment in time, NewYork.tel, California.tel, Texas.tel and Florida.tel are worth at least $950 each. They all have much larger populations than Alaska.

If you'll look back a page or two, you'll see that I posted this right after your post about weasel words, it was supposed to be a joke.

BTW Alaska.tel ended @ $1050.00. Not bad! :kickass:

 

[mwzd]

Yeah, the alaska.tel sale was pretty good at 1k

So now we see a run on geo's for .tel?

Tbh, from the way I see it, 95% of the .tels registered will end up being a losing proposition for the investors till such time as there really is a concerted effort by end users to adopt it. Which is unlikely from what I can see, I may be wrong, but I'll save my reg funds for now.

 

[ecigs.net]

If you'll look back a page or two, you'll see that I posted this right after your post about weasel words, it was supposed to be a joke.

BTW Alaska.tel ended @ $1050.00. Not bad! :kickass:

Sorry. I am so used to people hammering away at new TLDs, I missed the joke entirely. My apologies. :red:

 

[Ader]

Good news for people wanting to put ads on .tel sites;
Berita Indonesia Terkini: Telnic Announces New Advertising Record for .tel Domains

 

[saucey]

Ads allowed on .tel !!!

Good news for people wanting to put ads on .tel sites;
Berita Indonesia Terkini: Telnic Announces New Advertising Record for .tel Domains

Excellent find Ader!!!

First paragraph..

"Telnic Limited (http://telnic.org), the registry operator
for the new communications-focused .tel top level domain (TLD), today
announced at Domain Convergence that it will shortly be delivering a new
solution for text-based advertising listings for the .tel domain, enabling
.tel domain owners to use more traditional and measurable domain monetization
techniques."

Wow!... This blows Dub's monetization drawbacks right out of the water.

Looks like .Tel can be monetized in a similar way to all other domains now!

Yippee!

 

[hasseily]

Looks like .Tel can be monetized in a similar way to all other domains now!

Similar in the sense that you can put in sponsored links type ads that will display on the web proxy (and any other app that will want to support displaying those ads).
However the way you do it is somewhat different in that instead of inserting html/javascript into your web pages, you store a TXT record with the structured information of the ad: the title, description, url, etc...
It's up to the app (including the TelProxy) to display that information in logical manner for its intended audience.

All the details of the spec and the TelProxy implementation will be published next monday in the developer's guide as per the press release info.

 

[DubDubDubDot]

Wow!... This blows Dub's monetization drawbacks right out of the water.

Looks like .Tel can be monetized in a similar way to all other domains now!

Yippee!

It's a step forward, but just a baby step (backwards?) that changes very little. I find your "Yippee!" over this to be somewhat frightening.

---
"We have therefore enabled .tel owners to include clearly identifiable,
text-based sponsored advertising links. In this way, we maintain the clear
purpose of a .tel domain as a single point of contact whilst also meeting the
requirements for monetization across all internet-enabled devices."
---

.tel profiles have been able to display affiliate text links. This new development just creates an "official" spot for text ads and labels them as advertisements. Just imagine developing a .com and printing something like "This part here is just an advertisement." next to all of your affiliate promos. Not cool, right? Well that's pretty much what .tel is doing.

This is understandable though, since .tel wasn't designed with monetization in mind.

---------- Post added at 03:37 PM ---------- Previous post was at 03:29 PM ----------

oh contraire mon frere, I just sold a .tel last week to a professional developer of iphone apps for $750. web development isnt the only thing going on these days. not a bad ROI too I might add

I'm not exactly surprised. As I have previously stated, .tel's intended use works best with [name].tel, [company].tel and [strongKeyword].tel. I'm sure the one you sold falls into that.

---------- Post added at 03:41 PM ---------- Previous post was at 03:37 PM ----------

I've received tons of inquiries on my portfolio of ~50 premium category names, and most of the offers that followed were in the $5-10k range. I haven't sold any

Most of your offers have been $5,000 to $10,000? I'm calling BS on this. If you are getting these offers, then other .tel owners are too. So where are these strong confirmed sales? Is everyone getting these offers sitting on their domains? I don't think so..... because these offers aren't being made.

 

[Kate]

.tel profiles have been able to display affiliate text links. This new development just creates an "official" spot for text ads and labels them as advertisements.

I agree that it's not a significant progress.
It's like giving vitamins to a dead body.
The real challenge for any online business is to build traffic and consumer loyalty. Good luck with those dull looking pages. .tel is supposed to allow you to cut to the chase and quickly get the information that you need (no clutter remember ?). Adding advertising is one step toward MFA and actually defeats the original purpose of .tel.
It's just one more telltale sign that reality is settling in, the business model doesn't work so telnic and their backers are experimenting tricks.

Most of your offers have been $5,000 to $10,000? I'm calling BS on this. If you are getting these offers, then other .tel owners are too. So where are these strong confirmed sales? Is everyone getting these offers sitting on their domains? I don't think so..... because these offers aren't being made.

Perhaps it's the people running the appraisal scam. They like to make insane offers on mediocre names.

 

[DN_Hunter]

Just noticed the following ending at Sedo in a few minutes (not mine)

P i c k u p s .tel

Currently at 1,000EUR (roughly $1,417 usd)

Will be nice to hear if/when the buyer follows through...

 

[plaggypig]

Most of your offers have been $5,000 to $10,000? I'm calling BS on this. If you are getting these offers, then other .tel owners are too. So where are these strong confirmed sales? Is everyone getting these offers sitting on their domains? I don't think so..... because these offers aren't being made.

Shoot first and ask questions later!

1) I said I hadn't sold any.
2) I own a high caliber of generic names. It's understandable that inquiries/offers would start at the top with the most desirable and work their way down the pile over time. People want the most bang for their buck.
3) The aftermarket hasn't been pumped full of hot air as with previous launches. It starts from a seedling.
4) How many names did you buy, and more importantly, how many names did you TRY and buy at landrush? Be honest, because I'm just trying to work out your resentment.

As I said, I've bought several (unreported), and I have my eye on a few more. I'm also privy to a few transactions between other parties that went unreported.

I recommend buying some DubDubDubDot - why don't you make inquiries to see what's available at what prices?

 

[MicroGuy]

I've received tons of inquiries on my portfolio of ~50 premium category names, and most of the offers that followed were in the $5-10k range.

I think this is the main part he was questioning. You stated that you've had multiple offers in the $5,000.00 to $10,0000.00 range. You are either the David Copperfield of .TEL or a domaining Pinocchio. :talk:

 

[spline]

The dull .tel backgrounds

As a UI designer and AD I somewhat agree with the critics of 1999ish look of dot tel domains.
It doesn't look very sexy.
It need to look more sexy/fun and cool in order to become hot among mainstream.

However I think this will should easy for Telnic to solve.
Create a couple of different CSS styles, let a user set which style to load, and when the page load from a browser it would use that theme.

Hint: Don't use the same guy who designed the .tel logo.