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."

Comments

Sex Sells

[Joebert]

I've heard the saying "Sex Sells" but this is ridiculous.

Re:Sex Sells

[Carewolf]

It needs a rewrite. The modern version is: "Sex.com sells"

$14 million

[yobjob]

Definitely goes in my great big "wish I thought of it first" list.

Re:$14 million

[RobinH]

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.

Re:$14 million

[joepeg]

That is called Domain Hijacking. It is actually a common practice. It even happened to Sex.com

A guy named Gary Kremen was apparently one of the first cybersquatters in the early 90's when domains were free. A guy named Stephen Cohen then hijacked Sex.com, and Kremens sued him:

"In November 2000, at the end of a three-year legal battle, a federal judge ruled that Stephen Cohen had stolen the domain by forging a letter from Kremen's company to Network Solutions. Cohen was ordered to return Sex.com to Kremen and pay him $65 million in damages. (Cohen appealed, and in June of this year, the US Supreme Court declined to hear his case.) In the meantime, Cohen had fled the country, so all Kremen got as compensation was this California mansion and a derelict house on the US-Mexico border. Even so, Kremen figured he'd found his winning lottery ticket. Under Cohen, Sex.com had been taking in $500,000 a month selling banner ads to other online porn sites."

Domain name - so 1999

[nordelius]

Are domain names really that valuable anymore? Given recent stories on the way that search engines are leaching value from web resources, doesn't the default action of yer average mom-and-dad browser involve typing a company name into google rather than typing an url into the address bar? Er - first post (both EVAR and on this article). Guess I was just that lucky :-)

Re:Domain name - so 1999

[Compulsion]

It's just a trophy domain. Because it's too generic. Think about it, what service can you possibly sell there? I'm being serious. Sex is a highly specific thing with millions of "products", "choices". What would you expect to find at money.com or at drugs.com or at people.com? Nothing but a catch-all umbrella portal for other sites, so why go there and not directly to the specific flavour you're after, which is what a search engine is for anyway. Some poor sucker just paid 13,999,999 dollars too much for nothing useful.

A Trophy domain is exactly what you want. Pay for click banners, AdSense, and favorable linking practices net you, oh, $500,000 a month. It doesn't necessarily work under the old system, but it's a thriving internet business.

Today's sexy anagram

[digitaldc]

Sex.com has officially been sold to Boston-based Escom LLC for a reported $14 million.

Anagram 'Escom' and you get 'Comes' - now we know why they wanted it so bad.

expensive sex.

[Random_Goblin]

$14, million!

is that the most money paid for sex ever?

Re:expensive sex.

[rxmd]

$14, million! is that the most money paid for sex ever?

It's like coitus interruptus for geeks, you pay $14 million for sex and all you get is a domain name.

Re:expensive sex.

[Flaming Babies]

Well...it wouldn't even make the list on the Top 10: Most Expensive Divorce Settlements.

Is it really worth it?

[broothal]

I wonder how many of these sites they could get for $14 million

Re:Is it really worth it?

[shon]

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.

Too easy

[Billosaur]

There are a plethora of jokes to be made at this point... I'll refrain. It's just amazing how much money there is to be made in the domain name game. When you think about it, what is a domain name? On the technical level, it's just something plugged into DNS servers so people don't have to remember IPv4 codes. But on the media side of things, your domain name is an attribute, you're billboard on the information superhighway. And when you think about it, how smart were some people when they registered the more obvious domains back at the start? And now they're reaping the rewards. Sex.com was just too obvious to pass up, and now it's worth $14 million. That's easy money.

Business.com went for pretty much the same price..

[gd23ka]

.. a few years ago. I wish I had registered shit,com, it wouldn't be worth crap today :-)

Wikipedia article

[SecState]

There's some background on the domain name here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex.com

just wait

[circletimessquare]

as soon as they open up the *.sex domain, i'm buying

com.sex

muahahahahaha!

Its all because of the idiots..

[JeepingNET]

The funny thing is it totally makes sense for it to cost that amount... Think of how many 14 year old males and idiot computer users must type in sex.com. A part of business not many people like to admit but really does sell is selling to idiots. The sex industry is a billion dollar industry and while most of it is very legit the people making the big money is the damn reseller sites that don't even host their own adult content. They just link to others so by owning a site like sex.com you could make millions a year. Someone made reference however to how Google and others are now really changing the way URLs work and I have to agree. While sex.com is still a great buy I think the idiot who type in sex.com in their URL window will also be the type to put stupid stuff in Google and get back the same results. Now this is where google and other can are are helping. Back in the day you searched anything in a search engine and half the sites where either mislabeled or porn. I really do not find this much anymore and even if you type in sex you get 95% of the site returned to be heath sites. I applaud Google for this and while I'm not one for censorship or hiding porn I think this move is one for the good. As I had people making money off the dumb (or jealous..)

At Last!

[zmollusc]

I hope they get their site up and running ASAP. I am desperate to find a supplier of those Viagra pills.

Alexa Rank...3,560

[xoip]

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

No link?

[SamSim]

...And there's no link to sex.com in the story? Good grief.

February issue of Playboy

[mzs]

There is an long article about sex.com in the current February issue of Playboy. I have not finished it yet, but it so far it is well written and interesting. There is also an interview with Al Franken that is more insightful than humorous. So pick-up the issue or check playboy.com, sometimes they have portions of articles there with no charge.

Re:February issue of Playboy

[blankoboy]

Something got you distracted so that you cannot finish the article? =)

Wow. I wonder how much for...

[Anonymous Coward]

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...

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! ... Are you ready? Okay. The "Sydney UniX Club" of Sydney, Australia. That's ... rather unexpected :-)
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.

The headline should've been:

[yellowstuff]

Sex.com changes hands.

pr0n.xxx

[Quiet_Desperation]

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.

Re:pr0n.xxx

[sfjoe]

That solution will neither help people find porn nor stop the christians from whining about it. The problem isn't about segregating porn, but determinig what porn is. Are 18th century impressionist nudes porn? What about Playboy? Is graphical information about vaginal yeast infections porn? If we set up a system where all "porn" goes in the .xxx domain, then someone has to decide what is and is not required to go there. That "someone" is likely to be a Republican so that means all sex education material and anything relating to birth control or LGBT issues will be classified as porn and forced into the ghetto.

In 1995

[n6kuy]

I'm surprised it took that long....

Registrant:
Escom, LLC
ATTN: SEX.COM
c/o Network Solutions
P.O. Box 447
Herndon, VA. 20172-0447

      Domain Name: SEX.COM

      Administrative Contact, Technical Contact:
            Escom, LLC d54ma69r6ze@networksolutionsprivateregistration.co m
            ATTN: SEX.COM
            c/o Network Solutions
            P.O. Box 447
            Herndon, VA 20172-0447
            570-708-8780

      Record expires on 30-Nov-2015.
      Record created on 18-Oct-1995.
      Database last updated on 19-Jan-2006 10:45:31 EST.

      Domain servers in listed order:

      NS5.SEX.COM 198.87.233.72
      NS6.SEX.COM 64.244.252.131

This listing is a Network Solutions Private Registration. Mail
correspondence to this address must be sent via USPS Express Mail(TM) or
USPS Certified Mail(R); all other mail will not be processed. Be sure to
include the registrant's domain name in the address.

Link is NSFW

[Nick of NSTime]

Come on, even Fark lets you know when a link is NSFW. Please put some kind of indicator there. I didn't notice the naked pictures until I finished reading the article.

Oh wait, there are two things wrong with that statement:

1. I read the article.
2. I read the article instead of looking at naked ladies.

NERD.COM, FOLK.COM coming up

[humankind]

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?