The whole domain industry seems to be finally getting excited about Country Code Top Level Domains (ccTLDs). Even the American domainers are evidently testing the waters.

We had the chatter, the hype, the forums and the conference, so now what’s next?

I’m very pleased to hear that the TRAFFIC ccTLD went very well. Unfortunately I had other business commitments elsewhere in Europe and wasn’t able to fit TRAFFIC ccTLD in.

From what I have read so far on DN Journal it seem to have went very well and even surpassed expectations.

One of the reasons why I wanted to attended the ccTLD conference was to hear first-hand about the various restrictions and residency requirements that some registries seem to have for ccTLD. It would have also been good to chit-chat to the respective registry representatives and even local investors to get a clear idea as to the types of domains that are likely to do well on the domain aftermarket.

Analysis of ccTLDs
The ccTLDs do have tons of potential. The end-user markets are quite strong. If domainers get the right types of domains they could be laughing all the way to the bank.

Whereas a significant amount of the .com domains are parked or registered by speculators, I believe the majority of all registered ccTLDs are owned by end-users. Europeans like to use their own ccTLD.  One of the reasons for this is that while the .com version of their desired domain may be already taken, the ccTLD version is normally still available for registration.

Also, using the ccTLD is better for local search, branding and building trust amongst their local clientele.

Investing In ccTLDs
There are some ccTLDs that have loads of potential. And at the moment, that is all that they have got, potential. This is due to the fact that there are still loads of unregistered premium domain names for some ccTLDs. So the end-user still has a choice of top quality unregistered premium domains, and as a result, may be unwilling to spare the cash to invest in an aftermarket domain name.

Some ccTLDs are currently only attractive to long-term investors. It will take time, and even faith/risk-taking for the full aftermarket sales machinery to kick in for quite a few ccTLDs.

The only ccTLDs that will do well immediately on the aftermarket are those that monetize well, and those where the amount of unregistered premium domains are extremely limited.

If the ccTLD does well with domain parking, then there will be an immediate and active domainer-to-domainer sales market. If there are very few unregistered premium domains and the internet penetration in that particular country is quite high, then the domain aftermarket sales to end-users will be very strong.

My ccTLD Investment Strategies
Personally, I currently own my fair share of ccTLDs. I also owned hundreds of domains in various ccTLDs up until late last year. Most were sold, while some were dropped.

This recession has highlighted quite a few risks in my buy and hold domaining strategy. Given that barely any business sector was spared, I had to take various measures across my businesses in order for them to remain profitable.

When companies face economic uncertainties they take quite a few measures, most of which are tied to cutting costs. These costs are often related staff costs, and quite often the end result will be redundancies. The other popular measure taken by businesses is re-organisation. This often includes selling or shutting down certain aspects of a business.

With my domaining business, this re-organisation and shut down process will involve my buy-and hold investments. I am switching my business to a buy-and-flip model and limiting the number of long term buy-and-hold investments.

With that being said, this means that I won’t invest in the majority of ccTLDs until the aftermarket for those ccTLDs become extremely active. Of course the profit margins will be absolutely minimal, as all the great premium domains would have been registered by the buy-and-hold investors.

Diversity is key for the success of any businesses. I will keep a mixture of both long and short-term investments. However, I will reserve the long-term ccTLD investments only for the ultra-premium domains.

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You may remember my infamous “A New Domain King Is Born” blog post that made some people laughed so much, they nearly lost their rice crispies.

Don’t hold your breath, there is nothing to laugh about this time .

I have now registered eBD.me, my first .Me domain name.

So what will I do with eBD.me? That will remain a mystery for now, but it will play a key role in building our brand as we develop our domain strategies. For now, simply treat it as a shortcut to our domain marketplace.

Instead of typing www.ebusinessdomains.com, simply type ebd.me in your browser and you are ready to do business!

I have stood on the mountain and preached the gospel of .TV quite a few times. I sincerely believe that .TV is one of the strongest non-.com domain extensions.

As a matter of fact, I do believe that if there is any extension out there that could pose a credible and global threat to .COM’s reign, it would be the .TV domain extension.

There was a time when I was carrying well over 500 .TV domain names, all of which were one-word English dictionary domain names. I have been quite successful in selling a lot of them.

As a matter of fact, each and every .TV domain inquiry that I received ended in a sale. These were all end-user sales, and these buyers always came with their wallets opened.

Most of the .TV domains that were sold are now branding some major sites. The .TV domain extension, like most Country Code Top Level Domains (ccTLDs) is not widely used or invested in by American domainers. All of my .TV sales were made to European end-users.

Majesty.tv and Competence.tv are some of the well-developed .TV domains that I have sold.

.TV is the ccTLD for Tuvalu, a collection of nine Islands scattered in the Pacific Ocean. However, .TV is globally used, accepted and respected because of its appeal to television and creative media.

TV is globally used as a reference to television, and as such the .TV domain extension easily gains recognition.

Now there have been reports that Tuvalu is sinking. Some say that this is due to global warming. I have been seeing reports citing that Godaddy, the world’s biggest domain registrar is advising against .TV registration because of this. I have not confirmed if Godaddy actually expressed those views, so please don’t quote me on that one.

Most of the websites/blogs reporting that Godaddy is advising against .TV registration are also citing that this could be a PR stunt in order to push .ME registrations. Go figure.

I believe in the future of the .TV TLD. However, I have now taken an executive decision to cease all investments in this extension. This decision has nothing to do with any possibilities that Tuvalu may in fact be sinking, but purely due to the hefty registration and renewal prices.

Over the years, I was careful to take advantage of Godaddy’s 19.99 .TV promotional prices. .TV domains don’t monetize well, but I was lucky enough to secure enough .TV domain sales that covered the renewals more than two times over, each and every year.

As a matter of fact, because all .TV domain sales were to end-users, the sale figures were normally very impressive.

However, I am in the process of re-organising this business. I am doing everything to ensure that this business does very well in good times and is solid enough to survive any economic recession.

As an accountant, I am only too aware that you should not invest in inventory that you can necessarily afford to purchase and carry, but to invest in inventory that you can sell well.

The .TV carrying cost at $40 is quite huge when compared to $7.95 for .COMs. That is over four times more. Because .TV is mostly sold only to European end-users, the target market is very small when compared to the global appeal of .COMs. Hence the inventory turnover rate of .TV is not as impressive as that of .COM.

So although just a few sales could easily cover the costs of maintaining a .TV domain portfolio, it is more prudent and profitable to use the said cash to maintain a bigger .COM portfolio. This will result in far more sales, and far more profits.

It is just strictly business common sense.

We will however hold on to the following .TV domains as we have serious development plans for them:

Admit.tv
Amusements.tv
Afford.tv
Chosen.tv
Locally.tv
Someone.tv

Am sure you can easily and readily see the potential of those.

We will be dropping the other .TV domains that we hold. Well over 150 of them. If you are a .TV fan you can get ready to catch them.

However, if you want to be sure to get the one that you want, you can bid on most of them right here at eBusinessDomains.com.

We will send a handful of them to a 3-day auction at a $19 reserve. You have a better chance of getting your desired .TV domain that way, than to play the drop-catching game.

You can view the full list of .TV domains by clicking here.

Click here to see the selected few at auction.

Good luck!

Having followed a few domaining channels over the years, I had realised that a lot of domainers are not necessarily business people, but more like computer geeks without programming skills.

Now, I am not setting out to insult anyone. I know that some people seem to think that the domain industry revolves around them, so every blog post is about them or is targeted at them. Well sorry to disappoint you Mr. Vain. Take your head out of dark places.

Now who are domainers? I wrote a blog post some time ago asking how does one explain domaining, and thinking about it, perhaps Brian was right: Domainers are people who register “nice” sounding domains and park them with the hope of making millions.

Why am I being so nasty? The .Tel extension. If this domain extension will do any justice, it will above all others before it, reveal the true business acumen of some domainers.

It’s like calling up customer service and asking a question that is not in the books. The telephone representative had never been asked the question before, so they are clueless as to how to respond. Why not think out of the box and use your intelligence and experience to formulate an answer?

Well the .Tel presents a similar scenario for domainers. We have never seen or heard such a thing before, so we can’t endorse it.

You can’t park a .Tel domain, and you can forget about building a website on it. Most domainers can’t see beyond parking. Should domain parking drop dead tomorrow, for a lot of domainers, domains would cease to have any purpose.

So, I can’t park a .Tel domain. I can’t quote useless and nonsensical stats. I can’t put Adsense on the .Tel domain. Hence I’m going to render it useless. I can’t park it, so I can’t find a use for the domain. Everyone thinks like me, so I won’t be able to flip it. So it is a waste of money to invest in the .Tel extension. Such are the thoughts of the ignorant. Sorry.

This brings me back to Branding. The .Tel is not it. The .Tel is a tool to get you to succeed with your branded website, your eBusiness and your bricks and mortar business. It is your contact point, your business card. It is a business tool.

Let’s take Joe the plumber. Joe is not IT savvy. Joe operates in a small town or in his local area within a city. He is a sole trader. He does not know how to set up a website or understand the dynamics of web hosting etc. He simply gets a .Tel domain. JoeThePlumber.tel. He can within minutes, set up the domain name to show his address, phone number and email address.

It will not be a website with flashing logo, but the fact that it is a page that is accessible via an internet browser (www. etc.) and that all the required information is there for the customer to see. Instant credibility. There is nothing stopping Joe from putting JoeThePlumber.tel on his business cards. If he is really smart he could even advertise his .Tel domain in local newspapers or even via Google Adwords. Imagine what would happen if he had LondonPlumbers.tel, then gets indexed in the search engines! Get the picture.

His customer can reach him online, and he spends less than $10 annually for web-related expenses.

If you are domainer who can’t see beyond domain parking, then you will not get .Tel. I saw this same sort of ignorance with domain development, especially with minisites. One person in preaching the gospel of minisites went as far as to build a web page (or sort of) about a non-existent type of fish, just to “prove” that their “expert” opinion on minisite development was right. Later I heard him on web radio admitting, “development is hardwork”. Perhaps I heard a janitor speaking. Never mind.

If a domain extension requires investment by domain speculators to survive, then .Tel may fail miserably. I have not and will be buying a single .Tel domain name with the hope of flipping it.

However, if the extension survives, real business people with vision will use it as a must-have business tool.

Now, some of you may be saying I’m an hypocrite. I have always ridiculed other non-dot-com extensions. So why am I endorsing .Tel now?

Firstly, I’m not endorsing .Tel. It is not the Jesus Christ that saved me. I can do without .Tel. I am simply pointing out that .Tel is not for domainers, but for business people and for those who can utilise domains beyond domain parking.

Secondly, my grouse with a few domain extension is that you can’t brand them. The .Tel domain extension is even worse. You can’t brand it, as you can’t build a website on it. Hence, in reality, the .Tel is barely a domain extension. It is a tool. A business tool.

Domain speculators banking on the potential of domain parking are almost solely responsible for fuelling the domain aftermarket. Perhaps end-user sales are less than 5% of all aftermarket sales.

Hence, as the .Tel is more for businesses rather than domain “parkers”, there won’t be any fanfare in the domain aftermarket.

So unless you have got good business acumen, you are better off staying away from the .Tel domain extension. You won’t be having much joy with it, unless you can open the floodgates of end-users.

It is no secret that I do not dig most new extensions. I am now a dot COM loyalist, save for a few other ccTLDs such as .co.uk, .TV and maybe of course .net and .org.

Well with that said, I have today registered 2 .tel domain names, KevinJackson.tel and eBusinessDomains.tel. I will refer to them as domains as I had to use a domain registrar, but of course the .tel extension is not really a domain extension as such. From what I gather, you can’t host a website on a .tel “domain” or redirect the domain to another website etc.

So what led me to register the 2 .tel domains? This promotional video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m50xrDcj0fc

No, I am not hoping or aiming to pick up any women with a .tel domain, as I simply don’t need to. But the video is brilliant promotional material and immediately gives the purpose and idea behind the .tel domain extension.

I hate business cards. I always lose the damn things when I get them, and never seem to have any of my own just when I need them. With Internet browsing going mobile, all I would now have to do is tell someone my name, followed by .tel – Kevin Jackson .tel.

Here in the UK, telephone numbers are 11 digits long. People often change numbers regularly due to lost or stolen mobiles, new networks etc. People move on and change jobs, cities etc. Facebook and all the other social networking sites are increasingly becoming hard work just to keep up with. What better way to quickly find the contact details of someone than to type “name” + .tel in your iPhone, scroll to the number and call.

I see the .tel domains as virtual business cards. I won’t be speculating on this domain extension. I don’t intend to register anymore. But I’m damn pleased to have gotten KevinJackson.tel, given my many unsuccessful attempts to purchase KevinJackson.com. I had to settle for KevinAJackson.com instead.

If Telnic, the .tel registry operator could get there message across to Joe Public, and get the buzz going, then people could soon go crazy for the .tel extension in the same way as for a social networking site such as Twitter, or a device such as the iPhone.

The .tel extension may fail miserably like dot Mobi, or it may take off like wildfire. I think I would prefer to risk the $17.50 investing in my own names than to lose out should the extension becomes a hit in future. I didn’t dig Twitter at first, as I thought it was a mere waste of time. I am now reaping quiet success with Twitter. The same may happen through my .tel domains.