bmugford said:
What else are you going to do with .TEL? It isn't like you can develop it. It is meant to share contact info within a rigid format. It is by it's nature a directory.
I can see a few premium .tel selling to end users, and as far as I am concerned that is the only realistic way to monetize it. Sell a .TEL for more than you paid. The massive directories and subdomains people have talked about are not gonna happen.
Brad
Look, it's pretty insane of you to say that no one will pay for a directory listing. It's possible that many will... to some businesses, they are just happy to get their name out there (as basic as this sounds- you wouldnt believe how much money is wasted on advertising and some will happily pay you for the concept of what a dot tel might do, without having to see proof yet). If they havent had an internet presence or if they do on a YP directory already, once you even show them how the .tel works and what it does. I can guarantee there will be some buisness owners who will happily pay a few dollars a month to be in a directory on a .tel... sure, many wont until they can see it is ranked well in google for example and get some instant ROI, but some will just like the concept anyway even without high rankings yet or any proof of click throughs etc. This might sound stupid, but many businesses do waste an incredible amount on advertising they dont even measure. Im not saying this to go out and rip them off by convincing them into a .tel directory, not at all, but what i would be selling them is the potential of a .tel at this point.
No one really knows how well it will rank for seo yet, it's still early days.. but, Ive seen one already that has been optimised by someone with a .tel vip account, they got into 4th position on 1st page of google with 486,000 other websites associated with that name (and Im talking actually typing the name into google by itself without .tel attached) and it's still there!. So with enough backlinks created and enough updated keywords and data stored in a .tel directory, 1st page ranking may be very likely with a .tel depending on the niche.
This is talking about directories alone, you tend to focus on this one aspect of .tel when it's not even the only way to monetise it, yet it could be very successful anyway without question!
To say though that a directory service is a waste of time, is a waste of time... you'd be best to go off and bash .mobi or something similar website extension aiming to compete directly with .com that is less likely to be a success.
:bingo: