OK. Mea culpa.
It was my intention to update this blog, initially on no less than a monthly basis and then more frequently thereafter. As you can see, I’m a bit late. But… I think it is with relatively good reason.
Since our initial post a great deal of activity has taken place. In no particular order:
Since last time…
* On Friday, June 11 Mark and I were featured guests on the Vancouver .tel Meetup groups monthly breakfast bunfest. Connected via Skype, we outlined some of our views of the .tel world and previewed some of Mark’s Tools. We even had George Moen (all things Grand Poobah-ish over at Blenz) running the projector for our Power Point presentation. How’s that for rolling up the sleeves and demonstrating dedication to the cause? Thanks also to Marilyn Anderson and Bonnie Sainsbury for organizing.
As long-term practitioners of .tel, we’re looking down the road a ways to see what’s on the horizon that might have a positive impact on our .tels. There are two companies I mentioned during the broadcast that we’ll be monitoring and lobbying to incorporate .tel into their respective systems.
The first one is SkimLinks. Skimlinks dramatically simplifies the process of identifying and managing affiliates, and more importantly – managing affiliate links. The second company has a very bright (orange) future ahead of them. Root Orange enables many people to “own” top-tier, generic domain at a fraction of the cost and … on an exclusive basis for your selected geographic region. Can you imagine “owning” www.attorney.com for the city of Philadelphia or www.brakeservice.com for New York City and getting all of the natural type-in traffic leads from the major search engines delivered exclusively to you. Well you can (if you’re first in line) and Root Orange is making it happen.
Check out both of these sites. Better still start your own mini campaign. Contact them directly and tell them how much you want them to incorporate .tel into their programs. Each of these companies deserves much greater analysis and we hope to dig a bit deeper and see when we might be able to take advantage of their services.
If you know of any other companies that show some promise to help assist .tel owners to monetize their .tel assets, please drop us a line and we’ll post it here for all.
Due to time constraints we weren’t able to mention an absolutely killer app that has the potential to turn .tel monetization on its head. It’s a significant undertaking that will require some additional partners and/or resources to fully bring to fruition. Drop me a line if I’ve piqued your interest.
.tel Drops
* Many of you know that the first wave of .tels were registered by the general public on March 24, 2009 and growing to over some 270,000 (est.) registrations over the next 12 months. Like many new domain releases there are prospectors, speculators and other assorted registrants looking to satisfy their respective “itch”:
- Some investors looked for quick returns by flipping their domains (didn’t happen – their short-term goals became long-term investments);
- Some were happy to get in on the thrill of the latest domain release and acquire their “killer”, category defining domains. (I can tell you from experience that for some, it’s an incredible rush when you’ve got 4 or 5 screens open, each with a different registrar just hoping that one of them will get that absolutely must have domain… then another… then another… It’s all well and good until you start watching the mailbox to make sure you get the credit card statement before your significant other sees it)
- And some just flat out ran amok and registered either way too many domains and/or domains that don’t fit the extension
The point is, it has been 12 month, plus/minus 70-80 days depending on your registrar, and .tel domains are in the drop phase. Fortunately, or unfortunately as the case might be, there are hundreds of .tel domains dropping every day. Is there still some gold to be mined ? You bet. There are other sources, but Mark has developed a nifty little program that identifies the domains that are dropping every day at around 2:30pm EST. If you want a copy of the list, just post a comment here and we’ll be happy to send it to you.
On the Horizon…
* Mark is putting the finishing touches on some of the premium tools that will really help streamline adding content, ads, colors/colours, templates and icons to your dottel properties. Watch for upcoming announcements here. Remember that TelMasters members will always get advance notice of these new releases so make sure to sign up if you haven’t already done so. Best of all, membership is free.
* In the very near future we’ll be implementing a full-featured email management system that does everything but walk the dog. Part of the requirements of using the system is that all members MUST opt-in. Even if you’ve already signed up as a member you will be required to opt-in with the new system. But don’t fret, we’ll make it worth you troubles. More on that shortly.
Our main TelMasters site is constantly being tweaked and updated. Most of the changes are small but they all take time so your continued patience as we work through the bugs is much appreciated.
Comments welcome.
Cheers,
Interesting blog. Totally agree with Ron Munson’s comment about now being the best time to build up your Dot Tel portfolio.
The addition of RSS Feeds into Dot Tel could turn out to be a huge move forwards – will it be possible to incorporate a small image into each RSS entry?
I do a lot of work with eBay RSS Feeds and will be looking at the feasibility of listing the latest eBay ads on some of my Dot Tels.
Lastly, please add my email address to the mailing list for the Daily Drops of Dot Tel domains.
Thanks, Mike Seaton.
SS: Thanks Mike. Mark is refining the rrs feed tool and will have more updates soon. You’ve now been added to the daily drop list as well.
Cheers,
I’ve just subscribed to your RSS feed. I love your content.
SS: You can thank Mark for all of the content and interactive programs.
Merci!
SS: De rien
Awesome Blog. I add this Post to my bookmarks.
SS: Thx.
Thats some quality basics there, already know some of that, but you can always learn more. I doubt a “kid” could put together such information as dolphin278 suggested. Maybe he’s just trying to be “controversial? lol
SS: Nothing wrong with a little controversy. “If two people always have the same point of view, one of them is not needed”
Cheers,
SS: Thanks for the support.
Cheers,
SS: Thanks for the feedback. Will have our crack technogeeks look into those issues.
SS: Thx. Welcome aboard.
SS: Thanks Ron. The clock on the 5 months started 30 days ago. Best with your accumulation activities.
SS: Yo Adrian… (sorry, couldn’t resist
We too are in contact with Root Orange on a regular basis as we try to learn more about their roll out plans. As you say, they want to prove their concept with the the big kahuna (.com) before incorporating other extensions. That said, part of their challenge is to convince current holders of prime .com properties to:
a) give up control of their domain (as I understand – administrative control of the domain must be handed over to RO in order for them to offer the exclusive leasing services to their small business customers that want to take advantage of the natural type-in leads the domain produces), and;
b) forgo current parking and/or affiliate revenues while the domain is under RO’s control. This may or may not be a deal breaker, but if the domain is producing nice revenues, the owner will take a hit as RO ramps up. Remember, RO can’t offer up the leads from the domain until it is under their control AND they have marketed it to the small business owners. It could literally take months to do and not all .com owners will agree to that.
So if .com owners don’t provide enough quality domains (fuel), they will eventually have to turn to other extensions. I know it is still early in the game but if you type in the keyword “condos” and select just about any city from their drop down menu, the result (ostensibly the nearest keyword match from their inventory) is “OceanfrontRoom.com“. I tried Lafayette, IN. Now my geography might be just a tad off center, but I’m pretty sure that there are not too many ocean front room(s) in downtown Lafayette. Point is, they need massive amounts of inventory in a relatively short period of time before their system is taken seriously by their small to medium size business prospects, let alone any major players.
I’m not goofing on them, I’m just saying that they may want to consider other extensions that more closely match the keywords sooner rather than later.
So does that mean that there are immediate openings for glassrepair.tel, publicstorage.tel, taxlawyer.tel and the thousands of other great “local” .tels out there?
Not just yet.
Aside from just us girls knowing about .tels existence, there are still a few pesky technical issues that need to be addressed. We’re going to chat with the powers that be at Telnic to see if those issues can be overcome and if so, in what time frame. We’ll let you know if we make any progress.
Sorry to hear about the hit your sites have taken in the goolies from Google. We all feel your pain. I guess we just have to keep on tweakin’ till we, or they, get it right.
In the meantime, we’ve posted your Mayfair site on TelMasters front page as one of the sites we like. You’ve done a great job with it. Hopefully you won’t be penalized any further when Google and the boys find out.
Cheers,
SkimLinks seems like a very suitable affiliate resource for .tel owners – lets hope it works out. It’s early days yet for RootOrange – it looks like they are on to a good thing. While on their site, I asked (in live chat)if they are looking at .tel for the future – but right now they are busy proving the system with .com before considering other tlds, which is understandable.
In your reply to Anthony above, you mention keywords in the description for the icon. I have had some good results on Google image search using exact keyword matches. For example, a search for Plants displays in London brings up Plantcraft.tel in position 1 to 3. “Plant displays in London” are the exact words in my icon description. If the search is for any other combination of words, the result is different. I have had a few other good results recently, but just this week Google seems to be giving some of my .tels a hard time with poorer search results. Mayfair.tel has taken a right tumble, even for searches that were bringing lots of hits daily. Hope that doesn’t last.
Thanks for your hard work. I’d love to be kept up to date on upcoming drops.
SS: Mucho appreciado!
Thanks for the tip.
I have a lot more work to do adding icons so I will add some keywords.
It makes perfect sense.
SS** Hi Anthony. Welcome to TelMasters and thanks for the post. Your words of encouragement are appreciated.
Although not always necessary, there does seem to be a need for a complimentary non – dottel site to support the .tel. Your hyper linking process is sound and I believe that you’re right that the search engines will look more favorably on this.
Have you also tried entering keywords when adding or updating your icons? I looked at Mayo.tel in 2 different browsers and didn’t see any. If you go to Blowdrybars.tel and hover over the icon, you should see keywords embedded and displayed. I don’t know for sure if it helps or hinders search rankings, but it’s worth a try.
If anyone can shed some light on this, please belly up to the bar and let us know.
Cheers,
Terrific blog and thanks for all the tools that are adding real value to our .tel domains.
I have already developed a network of directories in my neck of the woods – http://mayo.tel- and I am leveraging this contact information in my local news website – http://www.mayotoday.ie.
For instance when I credit a photograph to a photographer in a news article, I hyper link his/her name to their .tel domain.
I do the same with the local council, arts office, government agencies, voluntary bodies, cinemas etc.
All linked on a daily basis to their .tel contact page.
It’s helping to make people aware of .tel; see in a practical way how useful this domain is; and it must be doing some good with Google also.
All I need now is a to be able to embed a Telpages search box into my WordPress site.
Indeed, when this is possible with all websites it will open many more doors for .tel.
Thank you for your efforts and tools Mark and friends.
I wish people at TELNIC would go around the world, TV and radio studios, to say how useful a dot tel domain can be for every end user, even if he is an individual, craftman or small company owner. My motto is ONE MAN, ONE TEL!
But we domainers should be careful not to stifle the baby, I mean that if we ask crazy prices for our tels we will never reach the end users and .TEL domains will remain between domainers only, while nobody outside the domaining groups will never have heard about them. This was my philosophical thought!
Did you guys register some IDN tels? I got some in French ww.café.tel , some in Russian : http://www.банк.tel = bank http://www.кредит.tel = credit
and restaurant in Japanese. Don’t ask my how it spells !
JOE THE PLUMBER HAS HIS DOT TEL, DO YOU?
SS: Thanks for your comments Alexander.
As you know, it is difficult to turn a slow moving ship. Many large companies are staffed by people who have legacies, jobs and backsides to protect. Decisions made in the past need to be supported and leading-edge disruptive technologies may not be conducive to doing so. It takes brave leaders to introduce new ideas that may buck the trends that past decisions were predicated on. In short, don’t expect multinational conglomerates to sidle up and get cozy with .tel before the obligatory committees, research polls and focus groups are exhausted. And that my friend takes time.
To be sure, we need to continue to make those introductions and inroads and demonstrate the benefits of .tel especially when, as you point out, it works in concert to support current marketing, sales and promotional efforts. Here in Toronto we’ve adopted a marketing plan targeted to specific large organizations, in this case the exclusive distributors of beer, wine and spirits in the Province of Ontario. Each of these distributors has hundreds of retail outlets throughout the province and finding store locations and phone numbers from their main websites is time-consuming and frustrating.
We picked up their respective trademarked brands (on recent drops) with the explicit intent to populate the .tels with basic contact information – store locations, maps, phone numbers and hours of operation and to present it to them as a gift for them to use as they see fit. Obviously we hope that they take up the offer and use and promote the .tels.
The companies are The Beer Store and the Liquor Control Board of Ontario (LCBO)
As of the time of writing this post, each of the respective companies have been contacted, they have seen the .tels that we created and were intrigued enough to agree to discuss the potential with senior management teams. If it works, it will have been well worth the $20 for the domain, the time populating it with content and making the approach. At the very least, we’re happy that we secured their trademarked domains and returned them to their rightful owners.
Cheers
Thank you, for your interrestig and thorough blog post: There is a lot of information there…
And the outlook that you are picturing, looks promising.
This is exactly the attention and permanent improving, that .tel needs.
As too many people are neglecting .tel. And IT responsible people of companies, don’t seem to have studied .tel properly, nor understand its potential, to be able to recommend .tel for implementation into the company concept for its web presence. As it is about setting up a constellation of websites, which are linked with each other, and therefore can interact efficiently and boost SEO, where one or more .tel domains play a major role and have a major function.
Basically, I understand your efforts and endevours to make .tel even stronger, more efficent, so that at the end, not only IT specialists, but any body, can understand and see, that .tel can be used in multiple ways to boost a business. And the better you know all the option you have, and will have with .tel, the easyer it will be, to match and complement .tel with a existing website, or to start off with a .tel page, to become something bigger. The single website, will belong to the past, and it will be: Website + .Tel page (for more interaction between clients, consumers and companies).
History has shown that most of the largest domain investors build up their portfolios when everyone has given up on their domain names.
In my opinion there is no better time to create a large valuable portfolio of this valuabe domain name than over the next 5 months.
Keep up the good work on the dot tel tools and I look forward to the advancement of dot tel into the main stream.
SS: Thanks Andre. Lots more to come.
keep up the good work guys, love the daily reg’d list, i like seeing what people are registering, especially now with idn’s, andre’.