ICM Registry the operator of the .XXX Top Level Domain announced today that they have sold the domain names Tube.xxx and Tubes.xxx for $750,000 cash.
The buyer of the domains, is the same company which has bought many of ICM’s highest .XXX domain sales; Really Useful, whose chairman JT is was a founding member of YouPorn.com.
Some of the other premium .XXX domains acquired by Really Useful and JT include Teen.xxx which they acquired for $400,000, Orgasms.xxx, Erotic.xxx, Casting.xxx, BDSM.xxx, Mature.xxx, PublicSex.xxx and Czech.xxx
JT said, “I have been working on a hybrid tube model for some time and buying tube.xxx and tubes.xxx was a no brainer. I chose to launch with an .XXX domain over a .com due to the impressive stats on our existing .XXX sites as compared directly to our .com equivalents. I have also been studying the results that other major players in the industry are achieving with their .XXX sites, specifically the prominent rankings of .XXX domains within Google search results. Tube.xxx will contain our own exclusive content and offer the visitors a network pass to both our “sensual” and “fake” genres and brands. These brands are some of the strongest in the industry.”<
Really Useful is based in the Turks and Caicos Islands, operates 17 websites; many of them operating under the .XXX domains stated in this release above as well as other well known brands such as FakeTaxi.com, MassageRooms.com and FakeAgent.com.
ICM Registry also operates a search engine at Search.XXX and recently rolled out a directory on XXX.XXX
I am starting to have my doubts that these sales are real. Its always that same company paying super high prices. Almost no one else..
This Is What I Got On A Press Release ~ “ICM Registry the operator of the .XXX Top Level Domain announced today that they have sold the domain names Tube.com and Tubes.com for $750,000 cash. The buyer of the domains, is the same company which has bought many of ICM’s highest .XXX “
@generigene. same here. I guess it’s Michael’s inner self trying to alert him to something 😛
and tube.sex? and tube.porn?
I really can’t see how Tube.xxx & Tubes.xxx are worth $750,000 yet my Roulette.xxx and Job.xxx are worth less?
With .sex, .porn, and .adult coming soon, it seems these will be the only adult extensions in a vast network of new extensions, and .xxx owners will be first in line to claim them.
Plus with great traffic stats seen already, it looks like .xxx is a good investment.
@ CMAC
with the exception of a couple of small value deals we traded for advertising space, every single one of our premium names deals have been for cash and at the prices announced and with no rebates, cash back or similar. Ask Mike Berkens or Frank Schilling if they wire transferred the funds for their premium deals…
@jose Really Useful will qualify to register, at basic registration price, tube.porn and tube.adult when we launch them this year and also tube.sex if we are successful, as expected, in acquiring that TLD in the ICANN auction in early 2015. if they choose not to register them they will sit permanently reserved for them at no cost.
@Stuart Lawley, why is it that only really useful has paid such high prices for domains? even frank shilling got a better deal. it just seems odd that this one company is willing to spend so much for these never used domains meanwhile you guys were fire saling domains for $1000-4000 a piece not long ago.
In another somewhat related matter, are you guys keeping to your promise of keeping pirated content off .xxx sites? from what i have seen you are not.
Since Stuart said to ask me, I wired my money for the domain i bought
However I would add I did not receive one offer for any of the 150 or so .xxx domains I own in 2013
@Michael
Maybe most people are too afraid to even consider making an offer, thinking they’d cost at least $500,000 each. 😉
@cmac forgive the brevity and any typos as I am mobile right now
It’s not only RU that have spent big money with us and kept coming back for more.
See clips4sale $400k purchase and IRIS sarl have spent over $775,000 with us on multiple deals for names.
jT is a smart operator and has built an Imprssive business in the last 2 years on the back of .xxx domains.
He seems to know what he is doing
All our premium names are listed with prices at our website and we are generally getting sticker price or close to it
There has been no fire sale whatsoever and will not be.
The piracy issue is too lengthy for me to respond to right now on my iPhone .
I can see why people would question this sale.
Somehow the registry is able to make these high dollar sales, but investors like Michael Berkens who have premium terms don’t even get an offer on 150 domains in a year?
It does seem a little unbelievable.
It just looks fishy when the registry is able to milk one buyer over and over again, yet there is hardly any interest outside that.
Brad
First the names are worthless. Then when the names aren’t worthless the sales must be fake.. Sheesh.
To Mike’s point, I wired in cash. No regrets. I got a good deal (which at times has not felt that good, but which today does), because I was early. Kind of like now in new g’s is ‘early’
As for getting a “good deal”,
— on the day I bought the names I thought I got a good deal and others thought I overpaid.
— When the name-space launched and Stuart set price at $60 I thought i got a bad deal (reg price higher than i’d have liked for mass adoption)
— When I leased some of the names for the first time I thought, i got a good deal
— When the new GTLD process looked more certain I thought I got a bad deal
— When Stuart announced that he applied for .porn, .adult and .sex and that he was giving .xxx registrants first dibs at registration price, I thought I got a good deal.
— todays sale corroborates I was right.
That’s the domain name business folks. Certainly not without risk. Never boring. Often with great reward. Get the good ones early, as cheaply as you can. Mike, I’ve had offers.. some decent. But given the amount of traffic (which is strong imo) we are definitely getting less offers per visitor than .com
That’s what .com was like in the 90’s though. Lot’s of traffic, no offers. .xxx will catch on and get really big, but it will take another 5 years or so.
@stuart, you guys had a big list of domains with prices from $1000-$5000 or so on a while bunch of domains. perhaps thats not what you would call a ‘fire sale’ but it was advertised as ‘get it while you can’ kind of thing. i guys its just poor business and stupidity on reallyuseful’s part on paying such a price.
To Frank,
One purchase no matter how great doesn’t make your XXX investments better or worse. This is such an outlier in a huge vacuum of non-sales in this space.
To MHB,
You probably won’t answer me but here goes. If you can do it over, would you buy again at the prices you did? Yes, 20/20 hindsight, etc, etc, but I’m still curious.
Tony
Why wouldn’t I answer you Tony?
The answer is No
@ Brad. Dont forget the .XXX extension is targeted at a specific , online adult entertainment community and we,as the registry, attend and sponsor almost all adult industry trade shows around the world such as Internext last week in Las vegas and Xbiz 360 this week in L.A. and we consistently send senior representatives to these shows to promote the product, explain the progress of the registry and to negotiate these premium deals. I honestly don’t think many adult entertainment providers are perusing the domain industry’s “for sale” Boards looking for domains. As an FYI, before this sale we had been averaging between $150,000 and $200,000 of premium domain name sales per month to many different buyers. In fact Really Useful even purchased 4 further names today for a further $49,000 including mega.xxx and cloud.xxx. Really Useful has been one of the top performing and fastest growing companies in the online adult entertainment space over the last 2 years , so it suggests they do probably know what they are doing. They are specialist in analyzing traffic and sign ups and have used .XXX domains since the beginning and clearly see good value in the “cream” of our premium domains such as teen.xxx and tube.xxx both absolute category killer names in adult.
@CMAC. All of our premiums domains are listed for sale at http://www.icmregistry.com/domains/premium/ and range in price from as low as $495 through to $400,000.
FYI- this is what JT posted about the matter on the popular adult industry forum GFY.com
“With hindsight, I would have bought a lot more .xxx domains when I was part of the founders program back in 2011. The reason I didn’t was because my company had not launched any websites at that point and I could not afford more. The first 2 sites I launched in September 2011 were the first ever .xxx sites to go live, namely casting.xxx and orgasms.xxx. The revenues generated paid back the domain purchases within 6-8 weeks of launch. Since then, the revenues from those 2 .xxx domains enabled me to launch new site after new site. In my network I now have 17 of the highest rated websites of all time on the tubes. On the .xxx extension, in addition to the 2 mentioned above, I have mom.xxx and StrapOn.xxx
I have over the past 12-18 months, been adding to my collection of .xxx domain names, with some high profile ones being announced to the industry. Prior to me buying tube.xxx and tubes.xxx for $750k, I purchased teen.xxx for $400k, and a deal for BDSM.xxx, Mature.xxx, PublicSex.xxx which stood me in $200k. I also own the domains massage.xxx, Czech.xxx, party.xxx, erotic.xxx, callgirl/s.xxx, girlfriends.xxx, audition.xxx, agents.xxx, escortagency.xxx, kiss.xxx, 360.xxx cloud.xxx, mega.xxx and around 150 others. F*ck, I even own boycott.xxx
Not all of these domains were purchased from ICM, some were purchased from people who registered them on general release for the $80, and they did very well out of the small investment. And regarding the purchases, quite obviously, I am not paying for these domains in one hit. ICM registry don’t hide the fact that ANYONE can approach them for a domain on their “premium domain” list, present a business plan and repayment schedule, and if favourable, you pay your deposit and ICM will release the domain to you. It is what I have done with most of the keyword domains that I have purchased, and I have a LOT of keyword domains.
Also, another huge factor in me investing so much money into .xxx domains lately is the fact that ICM Registry have won the rights to .porn and .adult, and they are expecting to be successful at auction for .sex. ICM registry are grandfathering the rights for .porn and .adult to .xxx owners. So, with the my purchases of teen.xxx and mature.xxx for example, I will also have the domain teen.porn, mature.porn. (and .adult and maybe .sex). You see, you get 3 domains for the price of 1, potentially 4. That means that I can launch 3 or 4 separate websites on the 1 purchase.
Additionally, I have all the search term stats from YouPorn from late 2006 till the sale in May 2011. We used to get over 600m searches a month in our internal search engine. This gives me a very clear insight to the category killing keywords. As and when I can afford them, I purchase more.
The reason I purchased tube.xxx and tubes.xxx?
1. sentimental reasons because of my background.
2. One of the objectives of launching a pay site network was to emulate the tube sites of today. To achieve this, I had to build out a network of the best possible stand alone websites. I did this from the knowledge and experience gleaned from the content partnership program we launched at YouPorn in March 2007. Quite simply, from the inside of a tube site, you get to learn what the typical user wants to see and how to deliver. I studied the content on YouPorn on a daily basis, and still do, looking for what users liked, what they didn’t, and worked with the content partners to make their clips perform better, with fantastic results. YouPorn, for many pay sites, was the lifeblood to them keeping the site running. We were the #1 affiliate for most content partners that submitted their content to us, especially those that accepted our help.
Please look at this link: http://www.youporn.com/channels/most_popular/alltime/ You will see that of the top 12 highest rated websites of all time on YouPorn, 10 of them are mine. Its only Nubiles and BRCC that are not.
I am now in a position to launch the tube site that I have been working hard at for 3 years. In this time, I went from a staff of 4 people to over 80 currently today. My teams shoot in excess of 150 full scenes per month exclusively for my network. I have crews in London, Prague, Budapest, Florida and LA. All this has been made possible by simply joining the content partner programs of the major tubes, and delevering clips that their users will like. I wrote a guide on how to monetize the tubes, you can download it here: https://content.porntube.com . There is no secret to what I do.
Yes, I only have 4 .xxx domains live in all this time, however, many of the keyword.xxx domains I purchased was to monetize my existing content. For example, agents.xxx will be a culmination of FakeAgent.com, FemaleAgent.com, FakeAgentuk.com, and PublicSex.com will consist of FakeTaxi.com and PublicAgent.com. I recently launched a compilation site that consisted of all my cream pie scenes, under LoveCreampie.com, and we took over $5k in revenues in the first month.
In the advent of the 1,000’s of gTld’s being released, the search engines “have” to change. the users need to adapt they way they search. Please watch this short video by Frank Shilling, the worlds biggest domineer (sic), and the early adopter of .xxx domains http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p75KeJN9D0E He explains it way better than I could ever do. This video was fundamental in me embarking on the recent spending spree.
In writing this post, I have tried to be as honest and open as possible. Hoping to give you an insight into why I am spending so much money on .xxx domains and why this is working for me. I am not trying to antagonise you or anyone and really don’t want to start a riot. For sure, there are still .xxx haters on GFY, and everyone is entitled to their own opinions. Its clear that .xxx is not for everyone.
My closing note is that, as long as you pay your renewals, your .xxx domain will last generations. I have 6 kids, and I plan to leave them a legacy of some of the most powerful domains in the adult industry. .xxx is gaining traction, with the imminent launch of .porn and .adult, the extensions will be gaining speed. It may take another year, 2 years, 3 or 4 years to really deliver on the promises, but I for one, am grabbing as many keywords as I possibly can.”
________________
@ Stuart
Thanks for the post, it makes some sense.
But I think “job” is also a category killer keyword. You cannot have an adult industry without hiring performers! I’m surprised they haven’t come looking for it yet?
Maybe when the other adult extensions are available the offers will start coming in? Maybe they wait for job.adult?
Congrats to ICM & Really Useful. I’m sure you know your industry better than anyone on here.
JT also asked me to post here part 2 of his GFY.com post……. he also told me he bought in the secondary market viral.xxx yesterday also, in addition to the further 4 names for us.
“I am not looking for justification on anything I do, not least the price I have paid for the recent acquisition of tube.xxx and tubes.xxx. But I do feel that an explaination as to why I have made this purchase will hopefully help you understand better.
I was part of the team that grew YouPorn from zero (Aug 2006) to 370m users a month (May 2011). We did not buy traffic, we launched the industries first content partner program, purchased $m’s of dollars of licensed content and within months of our launch on 26th August 2006, we did not rely on user uploads. This is testament to the sheer lack of DMCA’s we used to receive each month.
It was not by accident that we had an average page view per visitor of over 10, which was near 50% more than that of our competitors. It was our choice NOT to have pop unders on the site, even though the high 6 figure offers were on the table on a near weekly basis. We chose NOT to save 10’s of $1,000’s of dollars a month by throttling our bandwidth, so very rarely did our videos buffer, even in late 2006. We also discovered that instead of adding new banner spots to the site, that when we removed them, it had a very positive affect on page views. Having less banners on our site actually increased our ad revenue. Vendors would bid 2-3 times higher on our ad space than those on comparable tubes, because CTR on our banners were 2-3 times higher. You see, only a small percentage of users have a “click” in them post masturbation. Serving less, but more relevant, more appealing banners, helped us increase the CTR, thus increasing the demand and revenues.
We also listened to our users, and had a 3 strike rule. If we received 3 similar complaints about a product or banner for instance, the service would be removed, reviewed and adapted or replaced. Also, we only did 2 major changes on YouPorn in the time we had it. In 2007 we changed the logo and in 2008, we changed the framework to show 5 thumbnails in a row instead of 4. The YouPorn users didn’t like us modifying the site, and they were very vocal about it. They were also very forward with their thoughts and ideas on how to make YouPorn even better.
We did not run video ads for a long time, and when we did, we pre approved each and every one. We were very protective over the user, and would not subject them to some of the nasty video banners that you see today.
As with the content partner program, we were industry first at launching many user experience enhancements. For instance, we created the “we recommend” algorithm. We could footprint a users activity, and after only 6 visits, we could categorize that user. This enabled us to know what the user liked, what he is likely to find appealing in the future, and deliver content on that data. For many users, the “we recommend” section was their first port of call. This also enabled us to serve banners that were relevant and appealing to that user. It also helped us identify the types of niche that we were lacking on content, and we would go and buy the rights to this type of content, to give to the users for free. If you can second guess what a user is going to like, and provide that for them, you have a happy, returning user, that will tell his friends about your site. With our algorithm, we were quite a few steps ahead of the user in that respect.
YouPorn was often described to as the peoples tube, it was a brand, a cult, a very loyal user base. Thats what Manwin bought from us in May 2011. Is it the same site today? No. Has YouPorn become “just another tube”? In my opinion, yes. Do I think it makes more money today that it did when we had it? Hell yeah!!! We were a team of 7, Manwin/MindGeek have 100’s of staff, optimising even the smallest of revenue streams, of course they make more money.
So there you have a little piece of history on how the incredible team at YouPorn did what we did. Which leads me to why I have paid $500k and $250k for tube.xxx and tubes.xxx respectively. I am not looking to justify the price I paid. If I wanted to do that, I would answer the calls from my ex wife.
As my previous post alluded, I have reached the pinnacle point with my pay sites that now enables me to start my own tube site. It needs NO support from content partners, I will NOT buy traffic, I will NOT be selling advertising and I will NOT be accepting user uploads. But what I will be doing is creating a very unique, and in my opinion, the perfect tube site, based solely on my experience.
So, what will I do with tube.xxx and tubes.xxx? First, let me explain the issues that the tubes face today:
Last year, on the YouPorn blog, they asked users “How can we make YouPorn better?” 2 of every 3 posts was “Please remove the disgusting video banners”. Unfortunately, for a user, these video banners have the biggest CTR you will find and make the most money for the tube. For me personally, I HATE it when I am looking at a very sensual video on a tube, for the NTV A and B banners to have very rough or violent sex video banners playing. I guess I am part of the 66% of tube users that also detest these banners. Take on board their comments about im ads, audio on pop unders and other annoying revenue generating methods that have crept onto the tubes, and that 66% increases to 75-80%. Those are users that are unhappy with their experience. Every tube does the same as the next, so that is why tubes are not seeing the loyalty that we did at YouPorn. Remove those traits, and suddenly you have a tube that will give those users the experience they deserve, and trust me, there are millions of them, each and every day. They won’t all find tube.xxx or tubes.xxx on the first day of their launch, and I am in no hurry for them to do so. But when they do find them, history (and data) tells me they will stick around.
The first to launch will be tube.xxx. This tube will only consist of my own brands content. Brands such as FakeTaxi.com, MassageRooms.com, FakeAgent.com, mom.xxx, StrapOn.xxx, which are some of the strongest brands not only on the tubes, but the industry as a whole.
Why will tube.xxx work? An existing tube user has been exposed to all of my brands. And I built each of my brands from within the tube environment, by joining the content partnership programs of them all. Each day, my tube edited videos from each brand are amongst the highest viewed and highest rated videos on every major tube. It is estimated that we have on average, 8-10m video views a day across the tubes. From this exposure, we have around 15m visitors to my pay sites per month. I’ll let you do the math on possible sales ratios and the revenues I generate on that traffic.
On tubes.xxx I will launch a carbon copy of tube.xxx but open this up to a few select pay site networks, those that allowed me to work with them over the years, helping them build their brands, as I did, within the tubes. Working with editors of these companies helping them edit the best possible tube edit from their full length videos. Making sure that they only put out the best possible representation of their brand with each video. So, on tubes.xxx you will have, not only my highest rated content, but content of other highest rated websites on the tubes. Its about quality, and not quantity. Of course, there are strict caveats to being invited to participate.
People often questioned (but thanked) me for sharing with them my knowledge of the tubes and my proven business model in monetizing them. I did this, not only because I am a nice guy, but knowing that one day, I will create an exclusive, invitation only tube site that will be unrivalled in the industry.
I’ll also give you an insight into the revenues I make and why the sale prices stated in the press releases are in fact true, and achievable for my company.
I soft launched FakeHospital.com on Sunday 19th Jan 2014. Today, Friday 24th Jan 2014, I have over 700 members. On immediate revenue, another 6 days and I would have received back 100% of my outlay on the site. Looking at lifetime member value, I made my initial investment back in the first 3 days. The first tube clip hit yesterday, on YouPorn, it had over 1/2m views in the first 24 hours, already the highest viewed clip of the week and had a CTR of 2.34% on the banner. There were 62,701 unique visitors to the FakeHospital.com yesterday alone. This site alone will pay for tube.xxx and tubes.xxx by autumn 2014.
We also saw the same impressive results when we launched FakeTaxi.com, but this site took a little longer for me to break even, 16 days in fact on instant revenues. MassageRooms.com took me 21 days.
Every minute of my time spent with YouPorn, I was planning for my pay site network, planning the sites I would launch, and the day I launch tube.xxx, will make all those endless hours of watching porn and staring at data worthwhile.
I launched my first pay site in September 2011 and reinvested every penny into new sites. 2 years and 4 months later, I have grown from 1 site to 17, from a staff of 4, to over 80 today. I don’t have a fetish for hiring staff, but I do have a blue print for what’s needed to support each new site and I do not sway from that.
I’ll be the first to admit, its happened a lot quicker than I originally planned.
So, to answer all the questions:
Did I really pay the prices mentioned in the statements issued by ICM? Yes, but most on a payment plan schedule that is offered to each and everyone of you.
Am I happy with the purchase of tube.xxx and tubes.xxx? I set my heart on these domains in 2011, so I couldn’t be happier, really.
Have I over paid for them? Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and to me, so is value. I am very comfortable with the prices I have paid.
Would I have paid more? Absolutely, and ICM knew that, but they are as excited as me to see these domains launch.”
Thanks Stuart. Hoping pt1 of my GFY post will appear soon as will make pt2 make a little more sense.
This is my first post on TheDomains.com. I read a lot of comments from you all when Mike posted about my purchase of teen.xxx and BDSM.xxx etc and again with the latest purchase of tube.xxx and tubes.xxx
Feel free to ask me anything, and I will always answer any questions honestly.
I don’t consider myself to be a domainer, although I do own a lot. Maybe I look at domains differently to most on here. I develop websites, and very profitable ones at that. I have a very clear plan on the future of my company. For instance, I already know the next 20 websites that I will be launching, many of which are already in production. Some of these are tubes, some are “marquee” sites, such as BDSM.xxx, teen.xxx and girlfriends.xxx, and some are compilation sites using existing content on keyword domains such as mature.xxx, publicsex.xxx and kiss.xxx.
When planning sites, I look for niches, look for who are the players in those markets, tirelessly study their content on the tubes, join their pay sites and if I feel I could improve on this, then I start to build a team. Once everything looks to be falling into place, I secure a domain name. These can be $9 .com’s, as many have been such as FakeAgent.com FakeTaxi.com, Lesbea.com, and some are high priced as you have read.
I dont regret a single purchase of any of my .xxx domains. I would not sell any of my .xxx domains. I am also in the market for more. As Stuart mentioned, late last night I was offered viral.xxx and one hour later, it was in my GoDaddy account, and payment made via PayPal. Viral.porn will make a GREAT tube 🙂
In general availability in Dec 6th 2011, I registered around 70 .xxx domains. When ICM offered domains for around $10 (March 2013 I believe), I registered around another 50 domains. I have a game plan for everyone of them. Some I will develop myself, others I will work with adult companies such as AdultCentro.com. With them, I am launching a network of sites under the “love” brand such as Lovemoms.xxx (I have 30 other “love***.xxx domains and to build them into a network pass group of sites. They supply all the content, billing etc and you just pay for the bandwidth your paying member uses.
i’m not very familiar with what the typical .com domainer does with their domains these days, but in adult, there are some very clever companies with some very sophisticated platforms available for you to use. All you really need is a logo, and within days, you are up and running. You do not need any technical expertise to launch a site, they have support for that.
I am always interested in buying domains, especially .xxx, .porn, .adult. I consider them the best investment I can make. As in my pt1 post on GFY, a deciding factor to me was the YouTube video of Frank Shilling talking about the new gTLD’s coming to the internet. His short video literally put everything into place for me. It made me really understand the historic changes of the internet today, and the landscape for the future. I believe I am the best placed company in adult to take advantage of what will likely be.
MHB,
Sometimes my questions go unanswered here and that’s why I prefaced that. I guess it was just an oversight since you get so many.
Thanks for the honesty.
Tony
For sure I do not respond to every comment, but if I don’t its not because I don’t want to or trying to be evasive its based on having a day job in addition to the domains
)):
@Roulette
Roulette.xxx in my opinion is only good for a couple of things, slutroulette.com type site This relies on ad revenues, and most users on there are not old enough to have a cc or they are men, too busy holding something in their hand, so you need a LOT of traffic to make a little money. An alternative would be to white label a cam site, that has a button feature of “random” girls. That could work.
job.xxx,I can see where you are going with that, and I think your best domain of the 3 extensions is job.adult
This year, I am launching a white label model agency that incorporates a complex production management tool. This was created out of a necessity for my company to manage all of the performers and productions. The white label agency is very disruptive, and I will not be making any friends in that part of the industry. It works on a tiered affiliate platform, and you have a great domain there to put it to proper monetization. I would keep hold of that one for sure.
@cmac
Tube.xxx and tubes.xxx were the ONLY domains that I wanted to launch my tube/s on. I had known the price of both domains for a very long time and this was the purchase that I worked so hard for. You can read my history in the previous posts, and understand why i wanted the category killer domains for my tube/s.
Regarding teen.xx purchase, once I launch a site on that domain, the type ins alone will pay for the domain within a year, probably sooner. So I do not feel that at $400k, I have over paid by $1.00
The purchase of BDSM.xxx, mature.xxx and PublicSex.xxx for $200k was cheap. I would have paid $300k for BDSM.xxx alone. In the advent of 50 Shades of Grey, that niche has EXPLODED. The site will launch with-in weeks. Again, the domain will pay for itself with type ins.
I am in a privileged position to monetize these domains, thats why I would not quaff at spending over $1m on the right domain, and I am more likely to spend that sort of money on a .xxx domain than a .com. Reason being, and referring to Frank Schilling’s video again, in years to come, the future generations of internet users will wonder how on earth we coped. Peoples searching habits will change, they will be more specific in their searches. The search engines will educate the users, because they will make more money with delivering more relevant results. Guess what? Its already happening in adult.
Try searching for” teen”, you scroll through endless pages looking for adult content. Type in “teen porn” and bam, the worlds biggest players in adult are spending a fortune on SEO to get to #1. Type in “mature” and then “Mature porn”. Exact same thing. That is why I am spending so much on keyword domains.
Search for one of my active domain keywords: “Strap on”. One of my affiliates is #5 and my site strapon.xxx is #10. I do ZERO SEO. This is google doing their magic with .xxx domains.
Search for “porn”. It is the BIGGEST search term for adult on the search engines. Pimproll, who own Porn.com have been SEO’ing porn.com for years. They launched porn.xxx on a standard hosted tube, minimal SEO, and it ranks 14th. Tell me where we are going wrong buying these keyword .xxx domains?
JT
You have plans to by any .tube or .cam new gTLD domains when the come out?
Why spend 1 million on a domain if you don’t have to? What these domains will be worth in the future is anyones guess. you are looking through it with rose colored glasses due to your investments. icm would of sold it for a fraction if you had negotiated.
I don’t think judging from JT comments he is buying these domains to resell but to use in his business model so the question is like for any end user if its a domain they can make many times there money back over there life using the domain its well worth it to them to buy at whatever the price
Thanks JT.
Roulette.Porn could be roulette porn videos, not just cams.
I’d also like to point out that there is no ‘magic’ in what google does with .xxx domains…google puts less emphasis on keywords domains than ever. what is getting you up there is your content. the domain keywords might help but try putting up a blank page with a single join link on a great keyword .xxx domain and i think you’ll go nowhere.
@ Jose ~ One has to start to question the accuracy of sale reporting ? I can not see how a xxx such as these are are worth a cent ~ (( This Is What I Got On A Press Release ~ “ICM Registry the operator of the .XXX Top Level Domain announced today that they have sold the domain names Tube.com and Tubes.com for $750,000 cash. The buyer of the domains, is the same company which has bought many of ICM’s highest .XXX “ ))
@cmac
Possibly not, but I can tell you that I, as well as Pimproll are staggered by the performance of our .xxx domains. Of course, the same would apply with the equivalent .com, but I didn’t want Strapon.com. I wanted Strapon.xxx, strapon.porn and strapon.adult. Strapon.sex will be a huge bonus too.
And regarding the rose tinted glasses, they were company issue, the day we launched YouPorn 🙂
I think the key takeaway was:
“And regarding the purchases, quite obviously, I am not paying for these domains in one hit. ICM registry don’t hide the fact that ANYONE can approach them for a domain on their “premium domain” list, present a business plan and repayment schedule, and if favourable, you pay your deposit and ICM will release the domain to you.”
I think adult content should stick to the adult extensions only, now that they are available.
Just take a look at Tube.com. It’s absolutely disgusting to put adult content on that domain!
It would be easy now for the governments to ban completely free and easily accessible porn, i.e. make it illegal, unless certain responsible checks have been made to prove the user is over 18.
For the adult extensions only, it would be easy for ICM to give users access to all of their sites for a subscription or one off fee.
Roulette that is the very reason why so many in the adult business have been against the .xxx extension, an easy way to become a Red Light district on the Internet.
So who is going to compensate say Rick Schwartz who makes a lot of money off of his Porno.com ? Now he can no longer use the name for adult content and someone else owns Porno.xxx so no one can say do a simple redirect.
If what you propose came up I think you would see a reaction like you saw with SOPA all over the Internet.
Now you own a couple .xxx domains mentioned here so I can see why it would be a good idea from a .xxx owners standpoint, I am not going to knock that, I get it, but many people would lose their shit if the Internet had a sole Red Light district extension.
Porno.com would not be illegal, they would just have to prove that their users are over 18 by doing ID/credit card checks.
Oh ok, I thought you wanted all adult material moved to .xxx.
in the beginning there were only a few extensions. it were naive times but our founding fathers got the essence: keep things simple while providing a few main categories on which domains and websites could be built and information could be organized and flow.
thus were born .com, .net., .org, .edu and .gov
over the years man tried to expand the categories, sometimes for selfish and greedy purposes has they saw an opportunity to profit from short-sighted money, other times for truly unselfish reasons for the sake of humanity since some thought it could help organize better the content on the internet and build a semantic web.
nonetheless, year after year, the status quo built by our founding fathers prevailed. by some strange and devious way humanity never found that the need to categorize was a true needed for their use of the internet.
“Thou shalt not fragment the internet” seems to be the motto.
with .xxx and the likes operators will try to build a red-light district. others will try to do the same at other areas. travel, entertainment, business, you name it. all small webs in the web. do you want travel information? just go to travel. do you want to get music? just go to .music. and if you want to listen to rock music just go .rockmusic or .rock. fragment it, and then fragment it again… and then fragment it a few more.
another problem with unlimited gTLDs is the wrong idea of a freedom of choice and opportunity. the natural and branding potential of gTLDs is scarce and resumes to a few thousands domains. so we will not have in reality infinite choices with these extensions like we don’t have with .com. and only a few will be able to get the most premium domain/extension combos.
used.cars is killer. like it is buy.home or sell.home. or buy.cars. but how many good domain (hacks) can one invent? and who will get them? surely not the regular Joe (ok, maybe one or two, like they can get it today with .com).
on the other end who really wants to be a registry operator? companies have already too much work and spend too much money securing and monitoring their domains and TM infringements across the existent extensions. Why will Coca-Cola own and manage .coke? sure at the beginning it will look cool and modern. worst yet, at the beginning it will look stupid and outdated to not have it. but in the long run they still will need to spend money and work tracking all potential TM infringements. people will recall .coke as they can already recall coca-cola.com, or even less.