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Domain Name Sold for Millions
Luke PiWalker writes "The infamous and controversial domain Sex.com has officially been sold to Boston-based Escom LLC for a reported $14 million. Sex.com owner Gary Kremen was unavailable for comment, but a source from Kremen's company, Grant Media, told XBiz that sales for the famous domain name will still be handled through Grant Media's San Francisco offices. While other terms of the acquisition remain unknown, XBiz was able to locate information on the deal through a company called InternetRealEstate.com, which shares office space in Boston with Domain Name Acquisition Group (DNAG), a company that was involved in a lawsuit surrounding the Sex.com domain in September."
Definitely goes in my great big "wish I thought of it first" list.
I just have a feeling that someone would have stolen the domain name, had you registered it originally. I was at a bar years ago in Ottawa, Canada talking to an employee who said that a bar with the same name in New Zealand stole their internet domain name just by sending a letter to the domain registrar asking for the admin contact and details to be changed. There was nothing they could do to get it back.
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
While these domains have nice search result rankings, there is a dependency on Google's ranking algorithm that decreases their value. They could just as easily be blasted to page 5 next month, who knows?
What you're overlooking is the type-in traffic that "sex.com" gets. You'd be surprised at how many people just type in random URLs into their browser. What's even more interesting is that most of the "search results" at parked domains are handled through Google, Yahoo, and smaller outfits like sedo.com. Having a simple URL like "cellphones.com" can earn you a decent living from just type-in traffic alone. This article at Business 2.0 reveals how these domainers are making a killing from type-in traffic.
Here are the reportedly top selling domains of 2005.
For what it's worth, the Alexa ranking for Sex.com is 3,560.
If this is a benchmark, think of the value of any top ranked site like Business.com
sax.com, six.com, and sux.com? Oh, what the hell -- even syx.com? Somebody must be able to do something interesting with that one too. I expect Sox.com must be owned by Major League Baseball or the Red Sox. Hmmm...
... Are you ready? Okay. The "Sydney UniX Club" of Sydney, Australia. That's ... rather unexpected :-)
Sax.com is owned by a D. Miller in Malibu, California
Six.com is owned by some company (Xedoc Holding) in Luxembourg
sux.com is owned by ^!@#$@#$23! Damn. Almost spewed my drink over the computer monitor!
syx.com is owned by "Syx E Business Solutions" in Norway
Strangely enough, sox.com isn't owned by the Boston Red Sox, as I would have expected. It is owned by a "William Boston" in Washington. That name is a weird coincidence, though.
I'm still suprised when the porn sites resist the .xxx domain. It seems to me it would put an end to the whining and moaning. Parents could just block *.xxx, and the porn companies could get on with their business and lay off a few of their legal staff. People could set up *.xxx only search engines. There's a world of possibilities here.
In the wake of the disaster of Hurricane Katrina, my company has decided to put a few old-school domains we've had up for sale. It will be interesting to see what we can get. We registered these domains in 1995 and never intended to sell them as property themselves, but we need resources now to rebuild our networks and business after the destruction of New Orleans.
Among others, we're trying to determine what kind of price we might get for domains like: NERD.COM, FOLK.COM, IBL.COM, PROMARKETING.COM, and a few others.
Ironically, I submitted an "Ask Slashdot" story on this issue with more details yesterday that was rejected. It is boggling the prices these domains are going for now. We sold WISDOM.COM for $475k around 2000 and at the time that was one of the top three highest cash sales of a domain name. Now it looks like nothing.
So, if anyone thinks they can help us with the sale of some of these domains, there's a form on the site. The company who brokered the last sale we did walked away with $47,000 in commission. Can NERD or FOLK go for six figures?