Rick Latona, the self-professed “largest domain broker in the world” and publisher of the “Daily Domains” newsletter, interviewed Telnic’s CEO Khashayar Mahdavi on his blog recently.

If, like Latona, you are a domain investor who is “not entirely sure what to think about .TEL names, especially when it concerns the reseller market,” you should read this interview.

Here’s an excerpt:

Latona:                                                                                                                                                                                                                             How can my audience (professional domainers) profit from .TEL names?

Mahdavi:                                                                                                                                                                                                                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.

Other questions brought forward by Latona include:

How has your launch gone so far? Have you registered more, less or about what you expected?                                           
Don’t you think that bloggers and individuals would be more likely to get .TEL names if they were less expensive?

Addressing the domaining community, Mahdavi concludes the interview by saying: 

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.

Read the interview for yourself and let us know if you think Mahdavi’s answers measure up.

Register/Pre-register .TEL domains risk free for Landrush and General Registration with an official .TEL registrar.