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ICM puts $7.7 million of .xxx domains up for sale
Kevin Murphy,
October 24, 2012, 12:00:34 (UTC),
Domain Sales
Having already sold over $5 million worth of premium .xxx domains names, ICM Registry is putting another 1,000 names on the market, with a total purchase price of over $7.7 million.
Unusually for registry-reserved names, which usually end up at auction, all of the names are priced to sell.
Prices range from $220,000 for girls.xxx to $330 for provide.xxx.
Along with the full list of available names, ICM has also published some rough guides to likely traffic, based on its data gleaned from running search.xxx for the last few weeks.
A “Search Rank” stat ranks the popularity of the relevant keyword in search.xxx queries, while “Traffic Rank” divides the list into five categories by likely traffic volume.
ICM privately sold about $4 million of premium .xxx domains during its pre-launch Founders Program. Domainer Frank Schilling is believed to have invested seven figures.
Its biggest single sale to date is believed to be gay.xxx, which was snapped up for $500,000 last year.
ICM CEO Stuart Lawley told DI that the company still has about 500 premium names — including cams.xxx and tube.xxx — held in reserve to be released at a later date.
I would guess this is to raise more funds for the New gTLD program?
Is there any comment from ICM regarding that?
@ David Webb,
Thanks for the comment.
Interestingly one point that the press release erroneously forget to mention was that these premium names will qualify for the grandfathering arrangement we have in place to automatically award the matching domain name in the .sex, .porn, and .adult new GTLDs if we are successful fin being granted them by ICANN.
The applications funds for the new GTLDs have already been paid and sufficient funds segregated to cover the expected application costs. only one of our applications is in contention with another applicant.
the reason for releasing the premiums now is on the back of the successful launch of search.xxx, which in due course had to wait for sufficient content to be available in developed .xxx sites.
With the millions of consumers now getting more used to seeing .xxx names and typing the suffix in to use search.xxx for instance , we believe it is more healthy for the whole .xxx ecosystem to have these keywords active and developed with quality sites so that the consumers continued experience in the .xxx space is a satisfying one 😉
Again, thanks for your comment.
In the poker world, the timing of this release would be called a “tell.” If ICM was confident that its renewal rate would be strong, it would wait until AFTER the first year renewals data is available, as that would show stronger demand for .xxx with corresponding higher values. If the renewal rate turns out to be weak, values of these “premium” domains would be lower.
It’s just like the stock market, and an earnings release. Do you sell before the earnings announcement, or wait until after the earnings announcement? In this case, ICM is selling before the “big announcement” (i.e. the reveal over what percentage of registrants decided not to renew their domains).
gay.xxx is a fascinating case study. Corbin Fisher shelled out a half of a million dollars for a “premium” domain name. They then brought together the highest quality content from the gay industry’s five best producers–assembled together in one place for the very first time. They then invested in the development of a new micro-payment system that gives consumers greater choice at lower prices. They then promoted and advertised the site’s launch, hosting an enormous launch party at a nightclub in Las Vegas.
After that ENORMOUS investment, gay.xxx has an Alexa ranking of 640,000. Moreover, I have heard from parties involved that sales can literally be counted on two hands.
Moreover, for reasons I simply can’t understand, ALL of their stats have dropped in the last month–since the launch of search.xxx.
@ Stuart Lawley
Wouldn’t it more beneficial to just shelve .porn, .sex and .adult making .xxx the top adult search tool and preventing any new start up GTLDs?
@ Eddie Fye
If you build it they will come! It will take a few years for .xxx to really take to the general public but you better believe that come 10-15 years from now .com adult sites will be not only frowned upon but will be going the way of the dodo.
Good job ICM for getting .xxx to market!