ICM makes $4m from .xxx Founders
ICM Registry made just shy of $4 million from its Founders Program, which allocated premium .xxx domain names to porn webmasters.
As Elliot’s Blog reported, uber-domainer Frank Schilling’s Name Administration has picked up 33 .xxx domains for a seven-figure sum.
Schilling got his hands on the likes of amateur.xxx, asian.xxx, hardcore.xxx, hot.xxx, porno.xxx and many other “super premiums” domains.
He said in a statement provided by ICM:
I believe that .XXX, unlike many other new TLDs, offers SLD registrants the opportunity for long term type-in traffic. Many people navigate in a way that suggests they believe .XXX existed all along. Few strings other than .XXX share this attribute.
ICM president Stuart Lawley said that .xxx was a popular type-in TLD long before it even existed on the internet. Apparently the non-existent .web is also pretty good for traffic.
While on the face of it selling these super-premiums to a domainer may look like ICM shirking its duties to its sponsored community, Schilling like all .xxx Founders has committed to develop web sites at all of his .xxx names – the domains are not for flipping.
ICM says it has allocated some 1,500 domains to 35 registrants under the Founders Program.
Beate-Uhse, Germany’s biggest adult retailer, has picked up kostenlos.xxx (“free”) among others.
Channel 1 Releasing, a Californian gay porn publisher, has grabbed several domains related to its niche, such as muscle.xxx and jock.xxx.
I understand one UK company has also decided to rebrand its entire stable around the .xxx extension.
While many domains sold for six figures, not all Founders paid big bucks – many got their names for the standard registration fee in exchange for their development commitments.
Black Friday domain fetches $90,000
Sedo is reporting that the the domain name blackfridaysales.com has sold for $90,000.
It appears to be have been registered to Frank Schilling’s Name Administration for the last couple of days.
Black Friday is the name given to the day after Thanksgiving in the US, when pre-Christmas sales traditionally kick off. This year, it falls on November 26.
The operator of the domain blackfriday.com, which was a 2001 $10 hand registration, says it received over 18 million unique visitors last year, and that 70% of them were direct type-in visits.
Oddly, blackfriday.info seems to rank better in Google for the search [black friday], for me at least.
Other five figure sales Sedo is currently reporting include valuable.com ($28,500), webengine.com ($50,000), adhoc.com (65,000 euros), rodon.com (20,000 euros), uganda.de (20,000 euros) and littleangels.com ($50,000).
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