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The Lowdown



Feb. 3, 2009 Post

Here's the The Lowdown from DNJournal.com! Updated daily to fill you in on the latest buzz going around the domain name industry!

Compiled by Ron Jackson
(DN Journal Editor/Publisher)
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Don't look now but another new TLD land rush is underway. This one, kicked off this morning by the .tel registry, is unlikely to resonate with many domain investors though. You cannot build a website on a .tel domain, nor place ads on one to monetize it. Also, with land rush registration prices ranging from $295-$375 (depending on the registrar) per domain for the required minimum registration period of three years you would also be hard pressed to resell one for a profit.

This is clearly not a domainer's extension - and that's all right of course. The purpose of .tel domains are to serve as entries in what is envisioned to be an Internet directory of contact information for companies and individuals. The registry will host all domains (so no additional hosting cost is involved in owning a .tel) and since all .tel pages follow the same template the time and expense involved in developing a site are eliminated. You can list any kind of contact information you might desire, as well as keywords that will help surfers locate your 

 

contact info on the web. You can see a live example of a .tel domain at Justin.tel, which is owned by the registry's Communications Director, Justin Hayward, whom I met at DOMAINfest Global last week in Hollywood, California.

Costs for .tel domains will drop dramatically when the land rush ends and the standard registration period begins March 24 (to approximately $30 for a three-year registration). We will get a better indication then of how many people have an interest in using it. I can see some logic in the .tel idea but the extension has some enormous hurdles to overcome. Unless the registry spends big money on marketing (something previous new TLD registries has show no inclination to do) how is the general public to know that .tel is the place to look for contact info (or that it even exists)? 

Relying on search engines alone will not get it done, as the lack of recognition for other new extensions that have been on the market (with little impact) for as long as seven years has already shown. The key, as with other TLDs, will be getting massive numbers of people to use the extension so that the TLD (and its purpose) becomes familiar to the general public. That is way easier said than done - especially when they are so many other places already available to post contact information including existing websites and free social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, etc.). I would personally like to see .tel succeed as it would be nice if contact info could be consistently found on a single platform, but the history of new TLDs leaves me skeptical about that happening.

Last month we told you about a free webinar that BuyDomains was presenting January 29th to teach small businesses how they can benefit from using Google Anlaytics. More than 400 companies and individuals registered for that webinar and others wanted to take part but couldn't because of scheduling conflicts.

To accommodate those who missed the Jan. 29 session, BuyDomains has scheduled a second live webinar for February 10th at 2pm (U.S. Eastern time). Again there will be no charge to sit in - all you need to do is sign up, which you can do through this link.

(Posted Feb. 3, 2009) To refer others to the post above only you can use this URL:
http://www.dnjournal.com/archive/lowdown/2009/dailyposts/02-03-09.htm


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