Could ICANNs vanity extensions one day be as easy to get as registering a domain?

Damn you Rick Dees!

Having lunch with Jay Westerdal in New Orleans he posed an interesting theory. What if, years from now, you could go to GoDaddy.com and register .rick with your credit card?

While that scenario is incredibly unlikely it’s interesting to contemplate what it would do to domain values.

It would crush domain values. If anything could destroy the aftermarket pricing of .com domains, it would be this one idea playing out.

From a technical standpoint, there is no reason this couldn’t be done. ICANN could easily implement it and manage it. Technically, someone could just type rick in their browser and it would pull up a site. After all, ricklatona.com is just a sub-domain of .com which is the top level.

I’m not suggesting this is going to happen. Even if it did happen it would be a very long time from now. It is possible though.

Not everything is about domains. Rick Latona Auctions is now accepting any and all submissions to our auctions. Allow me to explain.

I think that’s a Jonas Brother’s signature. LOL

A month or so ago I was thinking about our auction business. It occured to me that I have an auctioneer, an auction staff and a willing audience. It was one of those “whoa” moments where I realized I should be auctioning off anything and everything that people in the audience may want.

That doesn’t mean that I’m going to start auctioning off vinyl albums and country lakes. It means I want to auction off other products and services my audience may need. Don’t get me wrong, if you have a rare antique sitting around you want to auction at no reserve just to warm up the audience, I’ll listen. That’s just not the point of this post.

What I’m looking for are hosting companies, traffic companies, web design firms and anything related who wish to auction off their wares and services to an onsite and online audience of domain owners.

If you have a company you feel fits that category, please contact me and we’ll talk business. Perhaps I can promote you to a targeted group and put some cash in your company’s coffers.

We have two major auctions coming in April. First, we’ll be at The Phoenix Forum. Later, we’ll be at the T.R.A.F.F.I.C. Silicon Valley event.

Economy be damned. We’ve extended our marketing reach yet again with Search Marketing Standard Magazine

Search Marketing Standard Magazine - You can subscribe by following this link.

In April of 2008 I took a very risky move and started to advertise in Website Magazine. We took out a 2-page spread to make sure that everyone noticed us.

In August we added Internet Retailer. Again, with a two-page centerfold.

Shortly after we added Modern Domainer, with a two-page spread.

Now we’ve added the two-page inside cover of Search Marketing Standard. It’s a great magazine run by Andrey Milyan with some really insightful articles.

What does this mean to the domain community? Besides promoting the overall value of domains, we have really extended our reach to promote your domains if you select us as your auction company.

We have T.R.A.F.F.I.C. West coming in April, followed by The Phoenix Forum, our own T.R.A.F.F.I.C. Amsterdam then T.R.A.F.F.I.C. in New York later this year.

If you submit your names to us and they qualify, we will include them in our print campaigns.

Interview with Kashayar Mahdavi - CEO of Telnic Limited, the people behind .TEL

I’ve never actually done an interview on this site but in this case I felt it was important. I myself, am not entirely sure what to think about .tel names, especially when it concerns the reseller market.

So, I’ve decided to ask a few pointed questions to Khashayar Mahdavi, the CEO of Telnic. He was kind enough to provide thorough answers.

Please explain how the .tel extension works differently than other extensions. For example, what makes it different than .mobi names?

The .tel is the first domain that is dedicated to communications and that allows people to store, publish and update online all their contact information and keywords under their domain name, without the need for a website.   This means .tel it has a totally different purpose than other domains.  Instead of linking domain names to IP addresses of websites, we’re storing and publishing contact information directly in the DNS.

For example, telnic.tel  does not return an IP Address as with other domains. It returns the contact information and keywords that our company chose to store directly in the DNS. You can then click on one of the contact details provided (tel, email, fax, location, website, etc…) and immediately reach us.

We believe that .tel the biggest innovation since .com because of this new purpose and service, and we expect it to spur innovative monetization strategies and drive significant growth in the domain name industry.  We’re bringing a different and new value to the domain name market which will benefit everyone.

How can my audience (professional domainers) profit from .tel names?

The .tel adds several monetization opportunities that investors should appreciate which widen the ability for a domain developer to generate revenue in parallel with traditional website-driven monetization strategies.

The .tel spreads the risk of investing over multiple methods of generating revenue, such as PPC and premium rate numbers for voting and betting services.  There is also value in owning vanity names, whether business or consumer focused.  It’s also possible to run a commercial directory service under a .tel domain and, of course, it is possible to provide links to revenue generating e-commerce storefronts.  Additionally, due to the unique content published in a .tel domain, pairing it with existing investments in .com and other domain names will lead to better SEO – a key goal in revenue generation.

Why are they so expensive?

.tel domains aren’t expensive when you compare the services I’ve just described to other services which offer similar functionality.  The .tel domain simply cannot be compared to other domains. However, when General Availability begins on March 24th, the price for a .tel domain will be about the same as any other domain available today (about $20 per year). Furthermore, all existing domains have hidden costs of web hosting and ongoing development, which do not exist with .tel domains. So once you remove the hidden costs, a .tel domain is much less expensive than a traditional domain.

Concerning Landrush prices, Telnic has made the decision not to auction any domain names, making even the best of names available on a first-come, first-served basis at a fixed price. We consider this to be the fairest method and the best way to support entrepreneurs wanting to create a new business behind their .tel. So, for example, anyone can register NewYork.tel for a 3-year term only for $375. Had we chosen to auction these names, at what price do you believe NewYork.tel, LosAngeles.tel and Dubai.tel would have gone for? Surely more than $375 for 3 years and no hidden costs for web hosting or development.

Don’t you think that bloggers and individuals would be more likely to get .tel names if they were less expensive?

People will be able to buy their .tel domains during General Availability starting on March 24th at around the $20 per which offers great value for the price. We are already seeing pre-booking activity for General Availability.

How has your launch gone so far? Have you registered more, less or about what you expected?

During Sunrise we had over 10,000 applications despite the very restrictive Sunrise policy we implemented that only allowed applicants with trademarks with national effect and fully validated documentation to apply. Thousands of .tel domains were registered including such companies as: Microsoft, Google, CNN, MySpace, FedEx, Sony, Ferrari, Starbucks, NYPD, Apple, Marriott, Nestle, Visa, Lucent, DeBeers, Exxon, Harvard, Old Navy, Red Bull, Xerox, Hard Rock Café, Alamo, L’Oreal, Lotto, PartyPoker, Philips, HBO, RIM, Vogue, Virgin Media, Rolex and many more. These registrations represent a broad cross section of industries and geographic regions.
Furthermore, we have seen a lot of good press throughout the world, indicating that people are thinking about this in a very serious way. The .tel has been covered on CNN, Bloomberg, BBC Online, Herald Tribune, The Financial Times, The New York Times and many more.

Please describe your transfer model which affects resellers. Is it a simple auth code model like used in most major extensions or do domainers need to fax a ton of signed paperwork?

This is a simple authcode model.

Any last thoughts or comments you would like my readers to know?

All great innovations have been met with healthy skepticism.  The .tel is no different as it truly brings a different use for domain names.

The .tel is now creating new opportunities for the domainer community, as well as a new ecosystem that includes non-traditional players entering the domain name industry, such as social networking sites, directory service providers and Voice over IP companies. Some have already begun the process of becoming an ICANN Accredited registrar as they see the potential of the .tel as a communications hub for businesses and individuals.

We believe that these non-traditional players will be a driving force of growth for .tel domains and the domain name industry as a whole and lead to a new value being assigned to domain names. This can only help the domaining community realize a different revenue stream and harness richer profitability as consumers continue to modify behaviors and purchasing habits in this fast-paced online world.

Welcome Ray Neu - The newest member of our family. He’s now our Director of Marketing

*Above - Howard Neu, Jim McCann (800-Flowers) and Ray Neu at a T.R.A.F.F.I.C. convention

Ray Neu is a young man but don’t let that fool you. He’s gown up surrounded by some of the brightest minds in the domain industry.

His father Howard Neu is Rick Shwartz’s business partner at Targeted Traffic and the World Association of Domain Developers. Howard who was a judge, mayor and a million other things in life is also a leading attorney on domains and intellectual property rights.

Ray was only 18 years-old at the time of the first T.R.A.F.F.I.C. show in 2004 but he was involved already at that time. He’s most recently been the director of T.R.A.F.F.I.C. and is a driving force in the organization.

Since our company partnered with T.R.A.F.F.I.C. on our ccTLDs show which will be in June, I’ve been working closely with Ray. He’s impressed me a great deal so we’ve decided to take it to the next level.

I’m proud to announce that Ray is now running a new organization for me, Rick Latona Marketing, LLC which will handle our various ad campaigns, social networking and some things we’ll be announcing in the coming months.

Welcome Ray.

Technology Sucks. If you tried to signup for T.R.A.F.F.I.C. ccTLDs over the last few days you might have received an error. It’s been fixed now.

Several of you have received security warnings when you have been going to the TargetedTraffic.com/cctlds webpage to register for the conference.

What caused the problem was that there were elements in the site that were similar to elements found in triblabla.awasr.cn, a known website which hosts malware software.  We have cleaned up the code and tested it and we have not been able to get any further security warnings. It wasn’t our fault, per se, other than not efficiently testing the site.

Although we have not found any further warnings, please let us know if you get any so we can address them immediately.  We would like to thank Hennie and Nico for helping us address and resolve this problem quickly.

Is a crappy .com or a great ccTLD better? Could a ccTLD be better than an equivelent .com? These are the questions you need to be able to answer before investing in ccTLDs.

The first thing I look for is relevancy towards the market. As discussed before, UsedBoats.co.uk is relevent to the UK market because British people are very unlikely to buy a boat from someone in Los Angeles. However, I wouldn’t put much value on a name like Macros.co.uk because British people could easilly learn about macros at a name as bad as my Macros.net. Macros.net is better.

Now let me ask you this question. Which is more valuable, findagreatrecordingstudio.com or recordingstudios.co.uk. That’s a little harder to answer because recordingstudios.com could easily list recording studios in the United Kingdom. That said, I think it would be much easier to get paying customers that own recording studios if you owned RecordingStudios.co.uk than if you owned findagreatrecordingstudio.com. What I’m saying is the ccTLD isn’t better than a .com in this instance but it is better than a worse name before the extension.

One name that we are trying to broker right now is KostenloseKreditAuskunft.de which is German for “Free Credit Report”. In this case, I’d much rather have KostenloseKreditAuskunft.de than KostenloseKreditAuskunft.com. Besides the fact that German only speakers would gravitate naturally to a .de extension, there’s the additional benifit of KostenloseKreditAuskunft.de being easier to rank well at Google.de. So, I do think that a ccTLD can sometimes be better than a .com name. *

In fact, I think that more often than not, this is true with foreign languages. This is especially true with .cn, jp, de, .fr, etc. where you have major economies with many people that don’t speak English or don’t speak it well enough to try English language sites first.

Be careful though, there are cases where this is not necessarilly so. The best example being .es. There are so many Spanish speaking countries, I personally prefer names like menos.com, los.com or vino.com over their .es counter-parts. Not everyone would agree with me on this point, however.

What I’m trying to accomplish here is to educate people on the things to think about when dealing with ccTLDs. The more you know about them, the less intimidating they can be. My hope is that some of you will become more comfortable and develop your own strategies so the market can continue to expand.

* Editors note: Germans don’t need free credit reports (as posted by a user below) so that’s another reason to be careful with these.

The Phoenix Forum - Rick Latona Auctions Will Be There

While this blog isn’t about the adult internet business, as an auction company, we can’t ignore the opportunity.

For years, Internext was the game in town for adult Internet companies. Around four or so years ago the Phoenix Forum took its place on the leader board. Run by Ron Cadwell and the power behind CCBill, it’s the biggest show in town.

This April 2nd through the 4th, Rick Latona Auctions is proud to announce that it will be the exclusive auction provider.

We will be mixing it up a bit and not only auctioning off domains. We plan on auctioning off content, traffic, hosting and anything else those in the business may need.

If you plan to attend the event, we’ll see you there. If you would like to submit names or anything else to the auction, you can do so here.

$3000 a Day Domainer

First, I’d like to say that I did not make this video. I was in no way involved in the production of the video. To add to the mystery, I can’t tell you who did make the video. What I can tell you is that it’s a friend of mine that has as much interest in the value of ccTLDs as I do.

I’ve been assured by the producer of this video that his intent is the same as mine. He just wants to increase the value of his own portfolio of ccTLDs. It’s worth watching. Check it out.

$3000 a Day Domainer