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.