closed Is .XXX a bust for domainers and a goldmine for registrars?

[A D]

I have 50 good ones that should receive traffic but have had a total of 4 impressions in the last 7 days.

So is .XXX just another chance for registrars to get cash from domainers hoping to land gold?

Seems so, so far, what are your thoughts?

IIs anyone making money of their .XXX names?

Adam

 

[Gerry]

No matter what, I think all tld's are a gold mine for the registry. The new .xxx is no exception.

If you know how many domains are regged and multiply that by the cost per name, you will quickly see how the totals get up into the million$$$.

Advertising expense??? Hells bells...this extension benefited from all the national press, all media outlets talking about it, and every registrar pumping it up like it was the best thing since sliced bread. Look at all the promo go daddy did (and still doing), look at all the talk about it on general news outlets that typically do not give air time to domains. This is tens of millions of dollars saved in advertising expense just letting others talk about it.

So yes, the registry benefits, the registrars benefit, and certainly ICANN benefits (which just reported a net income in excess of $100 million for the year 2011).

 

[David G]

I have 50 good ones that should receive traffic but have had a total of 4 impressions in the last 7 days.

This scenario is very similar to my negative experience with several .CO websites, which get virtually no spillover or typo traffic intended for the .com (contrary to once popular belief).

 

[Jeroen]

The ones who will make money with xxx:

-Registrars selling their tools to gold diggers and to the masses to 'Protect Your Brand'.

-Few owners of appropriate top generic names (that doesn't include names like insurance.xxx or mortgage.xxx for example).

-Perhaps -if done smartly- owner/developers of geo xxx

I do not own any xxx names.

 

[draggar]

You're just realizing this now? I'm thinking a small percentage will catch >reg fee in a sale. Some will be developed into sites that will become profitable but I'm willing to bet we'll see the vast majority of landrush domains being dropped in a year (or two / three etc.).

The real winner? The registry.

 

[katherine]

I would not expect traffic on .xxx domains.
I think the money will be made on sales, not on parking.

 

[ekman77]

I have a couple of .xxx's making money by forwarding the names to some adult affiliates. Some big ones that are getting traffic (Maybe 10-15 hits a day) are FOG.xxx (Free Online Girls), FOP.xxx (Free Online Porn) HLF.xxx gets the most. I have been trying to find some way to monitize but I am not getting a large amount of traffic. I think the only way I will get any traffic to some of these names is to somehow develop them. I am not a adult company but did see some value in LLL.xxx. I own about 8 LLL.xxx's that I am hoping some comapnies will buy.

 

[tetrapak]

I would not expect traffic on .xxx domains.

Me either. Why would anyone (other than domainers for research) type-in .xxx? People hardly type-in .org, and that is like million times more known than .xxx. The .co was at least typo of .com.

 

[Jeroen]

I would not expect traffic on .xxx domains.
I think the money will be made on sales, not on parking.

Me either. Why would anyone (other than domainers for research) type-in .xxx? People hardly type-in .org, and that is like million times more known than .xxx. The .co was at least typo of .com.

With xxx, people may have expectations with direct type-ins, especially with relevant top generics and geo names. I think this is different from .org/.co

 

[RatherGood]

I have 50 good ones that should receive traffic but have had a total of 4 impressions in the last 7 days.

So is .XXX just another chance for registrars to get cash from domainers hoping to land gold?

Seems so, so far, what are your thoughts?

IIs anyone making money of their .XXX names?

Adam

In short I'd characterize domainers in .XXX as "speculating on speculation".

If its a gold rush for anyone its ICM whose overall business plan seems to be collecting the proceeds from the defensive TM registrations while holding back the good names for "end user" prices and investing that money into building adult businesses in several key verticals like payment processing, adult shops, tube sites, traffic generation, search engines. They've held onto those key domain names for themselves, not for auction.

IMHO if the plan was to get TM holders to pay $300 into 10 year registrations @ approximately $30/yr over 10 years, that is most likely an average of their planned price reductions for the TLD. At $80-100 a shot, there will be no scarcity, therefore, no secondary market. and if you wanted a name from the secondary market you could just goto ICM and negotiate with them for something most likely better than what anyone else has.

Price reductions are most likely on the horizon, depending on how many domains drop off like flies next year. But like I said in another thread, if your rush/pre-order name isn't worth the $100 you paid for it during year 1 of launch, it won't be worth $200 once you pay a $100 renewal in year 2.

 

[Melly]

I did not buy any xxx domains and see no real value to them. The people who will make the most money are the registrars and those who managed to get a few of the better ones that will sucker another sucker into purchasing them for 10xs what they paid.

 

[hugegrowth]

I think its too early to tell. The great adult names probably have some traffic, second tier and worse probably not so much. Like any extension, websites need to get built and used by lots of people before the .xxx is widely recognized, and people start doing type ins to see what's there. It will be interesting to watch whether .xxx gets a lot of use in the adult industry, or not.

 

[Ulysses]

-Perhaps -if done smartly- owner/developers of geo xxx

I did think about this and it would really only work on certain geo's

I applied for 3 geos and I got 2 with 1 in auction next month.

These geo's are known for their adult areas, from massage parlours, escorts, lapdance, brothels, pornshops, gay bars, nudist beaches, swinging, dogging, etc

I thought it was worth a punt

 

[Jeroen]

Yeah, the only one I really wanted was Amsterdam.xxx

 

[dcristo]

I did think about this and it would really only work on certain geo's

I applied for 3 geos and I got 2 with 1 in auction next month.

These geo's are known for their adult areas, from massage parlours, escorts, lapdance, brothels, pornshops, gay bars, nudist beaches, swinging, dogging, etc

I thought it was worth a punt

Worst case scenario. A high class escort takes it off your hands for her services (assuming your a good salesman)

Actually saying that makes me think of the escort/domainer that used to be on DNF, forget her name.

 

[Ulysses]

Interesting news from http://theDomains.com about Sexy.org

Has .XXX Caused The Value Of Non.com Adult Domain To Decline? Shocker as Sexy.org Sells for $7,500

 

[katherine]

Nonsense imo. It's just one sale. And .org isn't the best TLD for adult.

 

[Ulysses]

Latest news I hear is that a .xxx domain name in a closed auction is up to $121 k and also CamChat.xxx is over $5 k in a closed auction.

Apparently an auction sales list will be revealed at the end of the process.

Who are buying these names? Investors or users ?

 

[james2002]

Interesting news from http://theDomains.com about Sexy.org

I would pay more for sexy.org than sexy.xxx on any day.

 

[trafficpath]

Like any tld if you have a very highly searched domain name you will get some traffic.

If a keyword receives less than 100,000 monthly exact global searches, I avoid it no matter what the "new" extension is.

Of course if it is a com I will go as low as 10,000 exact global searches.

My point is the highly searched adult terms are getting traffic right now in .xxx

The buyers of the very best xxx domains bought in the Founders Plan prior to official release, stated that publicly.

As for buying some of the "Premium Names" from the registry.

Do not waste your time they want a fortune for the good names .

Worse, they can not even respond to offers with final prices, as they needed to consult with outside sources to make sure they were not selling them too cheaply, LOL. We have had offers waiting for over three weeks.

This holding back of 75% of the great xxx generics is going to backfire on them.

As they needed many good sites up immediately to excite the surfers. Generic registry pages greet all those surfers now.

A big dead zone, why would you return.

Good lesson on how to kill the goose that lays the golden egg, short term profits for long term loses. IMHO

By the way I like the xxx extension, done properly with the adult community onboard , it should have been a slam dunk.

Now it is anyones guess. It was very poorly rolled out.

They told people to pre register their domains a year ago, even mandated you must have a previous ownership of an exact match domain name. They then took that list and came up with the most desired domain names, to keep for themselves as Premium.

Then they said in Sunrise AD you could get your exact match domain name in .xxx, but daily the top domain names disappeared from availability, some times "after" many people had wasted their $200.00 in the Sunrise AD cue.

This why some key players went on a negative campaign against .xxx

They went to register their well known names in Sunrise AD only to be told they were Premium Domains and had to pay a kings ransom to buy back their own brand.

So here we are today an excellent, well defined tld being boycotted by the very community it was to serve.

However, I still think that the tld wiil gain traction and become viable.

If a surfer comes to sammy.net or sammy.info, if they do not bookmark the site. When they want to return with so mant tlds out there they can not remember the tld so they probably go the sammy.com or just search the term on Google.

But if a surfer is on sammy.xxx, it is so discriptive of what they want, they will probably remember the .xxx on returm JMHO

---------- Post added at 01:05 PM ---------- Previous post was at 01:03 PM ----------

By the way we have been in auctions that have passed the $8000.00 mark and had to do pass further qualifications to continue bidding.

So I can confirm, it is happening on some of the Sunrise AD auctions.

I have no knowledge of the Landrush auctions as we are not involved in any.

ICM registry has said it will only post the auction results of the domain names that the winner agrees to publication.

So do not expect to see a full list of auction prices as many, ourselves included, will want privacy.

As they are not involved in the adult business but are investors in domain names.