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?

 

[Kate]

My irony meter just exploded.

*click click* "Yes, hello? I want to send a telegram!"

:bingo:

I wonder what's the rationale behind that reg as well

 

[saucey]

Is it possible to monetize .tel domains?

From what I know, it's not possible to develop a .tel as a normal website, and if it can't be a website or it's not parked with links, the mighty question is; can you actually make money from in the after/reseller market?

2 posts before yours (go to post #815), this question is answered :hehe:

 

[steveteva]

Is it possible to monetize .tel domains?

From what I know, it's not possible to develop a .tel as a normal website, and if it can't be a website or it's not parked with links, the mighty question is; can you actually make money from in the after/reseller market?

Yes you can make money from it, read many previous post by members.
But here is for me the easiest strategy:
Think of Geo or niche targetting .tel (carefully choose your .tel)
As you know .tel purpose is only contact infos (phone, email....)
I own a Geo name and it's easy for me to do "door by door" with all businesses in my country with an iphone 3G (or blackberry) to actually show them the benefits of being listed in my "phone directory" for a yearly fee.
And because .tel is so great for navigating with a mobil device that I'm 100% sure they will take advantage of it.
Email and Website (must have a well SEO website running) marketing or even cold calling will be more difficult but can be achieve when you get a certain amount of customers.
I think if your domain name is to wide GEO like ex: texas, I don't imagine doing door to door, so target your area that have potential businesses or find a niche.
For Wide Geo like Texas or California .tel, you still can monetize but will have to use the hard work (large scale marketing, website, adsense.....) but can also be very profitable.

 

[Jawed]

Yes you can make money from it, read many previous post by members.
But here is for me the easiest strategy:
Think of Geo or niche targetting .tel (carefully choose your .tel)
As you know .tel purpose is only contact infos (phone, email....)
I own a Geo name and it's easy for me to do "door by door" with all businesses in my country with an iphone 3G (or blackberry) to actually show them the benefits of being listed in my "phone directory" for a yearly fee.
And because .tel is so great for navigating with a mobil device that I'm 100% sure they will take advantage of it.
Email and Website (must have a well SEO website running) marketing or even cold calling will be more difficult but can be achieve when you get a certain amount of customers.
I think if your domain name is to wide GEO like ex: texas, I don't imagine doing door to door, so target your area that have potential businesses or find a niche.
For Wide Geo like Texas or California .tel, you still can monetize but will have to use the hard work (large scale marketing, website, adsense.....) but can also be very profitable.

Never heard such a far-fetched analogy before. Are the fans of .tel talking about pre-telnet and pre-gopher age?

 

[saucey]

Quote from Justin Hayward (Telnic):

"You are however allowed to list contact information for fees received or create some other way for customer to remunerate you for click-throughs to their own websites (clicks from .tel domains can be measured for example in Google Analytics by the customer) or via unique telephone numbers which might provide you with revenue before diverting them to the customer listed on your domain."

Nice.

 

[whitebark]

because .tel is so revolutionary as a tld, we cannot look back at .mobi and .asia and a host of other tld's and base our judgements on those because they're so different in what they do... .tel is one of the most useful tld's Ive seen since .com

As someone who has been creating websites since 2001 - let me say this - it's the most useless extension ever. It is NOT needed - it is duplication of existing content and get this and hold your hats - nobody has ever heard of it, nor are they going to go out of their way to find out. It's not revolutionary in any sense. It's highly restrictive - that's revolutionary to some I guess... to others who monetize sites on a daily basis it's a giant red flag saying get away!

The only people making money on this dog will be the registry (as always) and those that get in and out early. There are many mobi domainers holding the same garbage now being registered in this extension and they are worthless but somehow this one will be different? Please. Live and learn or repeat the same mistakes - the choice is yours.

 

[firefly]

Amen Brother!

 

[MicroGuy]

As someone who has been creating websites since 2001 - let me say this - it's the most useless extension ever. It is NOT needed - it is duplication of existing content and get this and hold your hats - nobody has ever heard of it, nor are they going to go out of their way to find out. It's not revolutionary in any sense. It's highly restrictive - that's revolutionary to some I guess... to others who monetize sites on a daily basis it's a giant red flag saying get away!

The only people making money on this dog will be the registry (as always) and those that get in and out early. There are many mobi domainers holding the same garbage now being registered in this extension and they are worthless but somehow this one will be different? Please. Live and learn or repeat the same mistakes - the choice is yours.

Glad to see some much needed sanity and wisdom join the fray.

"Those who cannot remember {or learn from} the past are condemned to repeat it." - George Santayana

 

[phase111]

As someone who has been creating websites since 2001 - let me say this - it's the most useless extension ever. It is NOT needed - it is duplication of existing content and get this and hold your hats - nobody has ever heard of it, nor are they going to go out of their way to find out. It's not revolutionary in any sense. It's highly restrictive - that's revolutionary to some I guess... to others who monetize sites on a daily basis it's a giant red flag saying get away!

The only people making money on this dog will be the registry (as always) and those that get in and out early. There are many mobi domainers holding the same garbage now being registered in this extension and they are worthless but somehow this one will be different? Please. Live and learn or repeat the same mistakes - the choice is yours.

Maybee for developers like yourselves, used to traditional type websites, this tld might not be exciting, but the wider community will cast their votes as to it's success, Im sure you thought texting was a useless idea too, lol.

 

[MicroGuy]

Maybee for developers like yourselves, used to traditional type websites, this tld might not be exciting, but the wider community will cast their votes as to it's success, Im sure you thought texting was a useless idea too, lol.

This extension is being heavily marketed directly to domainers. That should tell you something. If the plan was to have this grand phone book, why on earth would they want a bunch of cybernerds sitting on all the best names?

The truth is that the Telnic registry controls practically every aspect of 'your' domain including the page appearance and the page load times. Justin.tel is still taking a full ten seconds to load from my location. At least that's better than the 59-second average of a few days ago. I thought the whole sales pitch was based on "speed" and how much faster pages would be delivered to the user?

The product is being sold and advertised based on a faulty premise. That .TEL can offer something that no other extension can. This is simply not true and not by a long shot. IMO.

 

[tvdotcoms]

This extension is being heavily marketed directly to domainers. That should tell you something. If the plan was to have this grand phone book, why on earth would they want a bunch of cybernerds sitting on all the best names?

The truth is that the Telnic registry controls practically every aspect of 'your' domain including the page appearance and the page load times. Justin.tel is still taking a full ten seconds to load from my location. At least that's better than the 59-second average of a few days ago. I thought the whole sales pitch was based on "speed" and how much faster pages would be delivered to the user?

The product is being sold and advertised based on a faulty premise. That .TEL can offer something that no other extension can. This is simply not true and not by a long shot. IMO.

I strongly Agreed, I learned my lesson when I bought .asia names, I will never buy anything from .com, net org thats all.

 

[phase111]

This extension is being heavily marketed directly to domainers. That should tell you something. If the plan was to have this grand phone book, why on earth would they want a bunch of cybernerds sitting on all the best names?

The truth is that the Telnic registry controls practically every aspect of 'your' domain including the page appearance and the page load times. Justin.tel is still taking a full ten seconds to load from my location. At least that's better than the 59-second average of a few days ago. I thought the whole sales pitch was based on "speed" and how much faster pages would be delivered to the user?

The product is being sold and advertised based on a faulty premise. That .TEL can offer something that no other extension can. This is simply not true and not by a long shot. IMO.

Did you read Justin's explanation about loading times for Justin.tel? Apparently this is on a seperate server unlike all the others and that's why the otehr ones load just fine but hasnt been..makes sense.

 

[onlinelife]

This extension is being heavily marketed directly to domainers. That should tell you something. If the plan was to have this grand phone book, why on earth would they want a bunch of cybernerds sitting on all the best names?

The truth is that the Telnic registry controls practically every aspect of 'your' domain including the page appearance and the page load times. Justin.tel is still taking a full ten seconds to load from my location. At least that's better than the 59-second average of a few days ago. I thought the whole sales pitch was based on "speed" and how much faster pages would be delivered to the user?

The product is being sold and advertised based on a faulty premise. That .TEL can offer something that no other extension can. This is simply not true and not by a long shot. IMO.

It’s not “live” yet!
After March 24th we gonna see how individuals and companies adopt this new tld. It’s a new marketing tool and certainly attracts niche market based on “telemarketing”
Many individuals, professionals might don’t feel need of their own website, but they will like to have online presence with .tel domain. And believe it or not many will print .tel domain on their business card. IMHO

 

[MicroGuy]

Did you read Justin's explanation about loading times for Justin.tel? Apparently this is on a seperate server unlike all the others and that's why the otehr ones load just fine but hasnt been..makes sense.

According to his videotaped interview, this domain is being used for "demonstration purposes". If I were going to talk about AND publicize a .TEL for demonstration purposes, I would darn well put it on the fastest server available.

If a hosting company under-performs or over-sells its server resources, I switch hosting companies. The inherent lack of control with .TEL is a trap. You are in essence married to the registry/registrar in regards to hosting.

This is not optional, and that's a HUGE problem. IMO.

 

[steveteva]

because .tel is so revolutionary as a tld, we cannot look back at .mobi and .asia and a host of other tld's and base our judgements on those because they're so different in what they do... .tel is one of the most useful tld's Ive seen since .com

As someone who has been creating websites since 2001 - let me say this - it's the most useless extension ever. It is NOT needed - it is duplication of existing content and get this and hold your hats - nobody has ever heard of it, nor are they going to go out of their way to find out. It's not revolutionary in any sense. It's highly restrictive - that's revolutionary to some I guess... to others who monetize sites on a daily basis it's a giant red flag saying get away!

The only people making money on this dog will be the registry (as always) and those that get in and out early. There are many mobi domainers holding the same garbage now being registered in this extension and they are worthless but somehow this one will be different? Please. Live and learn or repeat the same mistakes - the choice is yours.

Never heard such a far-fetched analogy before. Are the fans of .tel talking about pre-telnet and pre-gopher age?

Totally disagree with these statements.
.tel is perfect on time as mobil devices and 3G is out for the mass. I challenge you to find a business using web browser on a iPhone, Palm, Blackberry with any yellow page directory versus a .tel business directory (when available); it will take less time and be more convienient on a .tel rather than those online yellow pages. So before saying .tel is pre-gopher age and fans of .tel think twice. I'm not a .tel fan but someone who studies about domain names since 1999 and believes that .tel have a lot of potential.

Here is a simple fact that happen to me today. For Valentine day's I was very busy on the road and wanted to make a reservation in a Hilton hotel restaurant but don't have their phone numbers. If .tel was live with these infos, it will really help me and avoid bad surprises. Some clicks on my iPhone will display the phone number and one press on it will call the restaurant reservation center.
So today I had no choice to call a phone directory assistant, wait 5 minutes (fees/ minutes waiting), operator on the phone asking me information.... have my pen and paper ready to write number and make call. :td:

 

[Steven]

Totally disagree with these statements.
.tel is perfect on time as mobil devices and 3G is out for the mass. I challenge you to find a business using web browser on a iPhone, Palm, Blackberry with any yellow page directory versus a .tel business directory (when available); it will take less time and be more convienient on a .tel rather than those online yellow pages. So before saying .tel is pre-gopher age and fans of .tel think twice. I'm not a .tel fan but someone who studies about domain names since 1999 and believes that .tel have a lot of potential.

Here is a simple fact that happen to me today. For Valentine day's I was very busy on the road and wanted to make a reservation in a Hilton hotel restaurant but don't have their phone numbers. If .tel was live with these infos, it will really help me and avoid bad surprises. Some clicks on my iPhone will display the phone number and one press on it will call the restaurant reservation center.
So today I had no choice to call a phone directory assistant, wait 5 minutes (fees/ minutes waiting), operator on the phone asking me information.... have my pen and paper ready to write number and make call. :td:

Go to superpages.com
You'll automatically be redirected to mobile version if you are on your cell phone.
It has every single business listing that you can search easily (like google) + mobile map.
With one click on the number listed, your phone will automatically dial.

 

[steveteva]

Totally disagree with these statements.
.tel is perfect on time as mobil devices and 3G is out for the mass. I challenge you to find a business using web browser on a iPhone, Palm, Blackberry with any yellow page directory versus a .tel business directory (when available); it will take less time and be more convienient on a .tel rather than those online yellow pages. So before saying .tel is pre-gopher age and fans of .tel think twice. I'm not a .tel fan but someone who studies about domain names since 1999 and believes that .tel have a lot of potential.

Here is a simple fact that happen to me today. For Valentine day's I was very busy on the road and wanted to make a reservation in a Hilton hotel restaurant but don't have their phone numbers. If .tel was live with these infos, it will really help me and avoid bad surprises. Some clicks on my iPhone will display the phone number and one press on it will call the restaurant reservation center.
So today I had no choice to call a phone directory assistant, wait 5 minutes (fees/ minutes waiting), operator on the phone asking me information.... have my pen and paper ready to write number and make call. :td:

Go to superpages.com
You'll automatically be redirected to mobile version if you are on your cell phone.
It has every single business listing that you can search easily (like google) + mobile map.
With one click on the number listed, your phone will automatically dial.

Did try and the mobi version does not list the hotel in my area.
hotel hilton hawaii
http://wap.superpages.com/mobile/smart.sp?keyword=hilton+hotel+hawaii

Results: Boston

 

[Steven]

Did try and the mobi version does not list the hotel in my area.
hotel hilton hawaii
http://wap.superpages.com/mobile/smart.sp?keyword=hilton+hotel+hawaii

Results: Boston

I get Hawaii (because I entered Hawaii as location first)

You have to enter your current/desired location first.
Then when you search, you'll get the result in that specific area.

Superpages is the biggest North America yellowpage site on the net.
I'm sure that it will not have problems like this.

 

[steveteva]

Did try and the mobi version does not list the hotel in my area.
hotel hilton hawaii
http://wap.superpages.com/mobile/smart.sp?keyword=hilton+hotel+hawaii

Results: Boston

I get Hawaii (because I entered Hawaii as location first)

You have to enter your current/desired location first.
Then when you search, you'll get the result in that specific area.

Superpages is the biggest North America yellowpage site on the net.
I'm sure that it will not have problems like this.

WOW did not know that, you knock me down, no comment. :kickass:

P.S.: for countries (like tahiti...) that don't have mobi version of their yellow pages, .tel can be interesting.

 

[Steven]

WOW did not know that, you knock me down, no comment. :kickass:

P.S.: for countries (like tahiti...) that don't have mobi version of their yellow pages, .tel can be interesting.

I found it useful when traveling.

superpages.com only covers north america (mainly USA) I believe.
For other countries, it will be interesting to see what .tel will do.