sex.com sells for $13 million

[TheRichLife]

From CNBC.com:

Sex.com, widely considered to be among the most valuable web addresses in the world, was sold for $13 million by its bankrupt owner, Escom.

In court papers filed on Monday, the company said Clover Holdings was the successful bidder for the domain name. The deal is yet to be approved by the bankruptcy court.

It was not immediately clear what Clover Holdings plans to do with the web address.

In May, Escom reached an agreement with its creditors to auction the sex.com name and hired Sedo.com, a domain name marketplace, to find potential buyers.

Escom reportedly bought the domain name for $14 million in 2006.

[King Shiloh]

I have heard about this news before. BTW, why are some people spending so much money to just buy a domain name? Do they really see what might happen in the future?

[MagicAce]

sex.com shoud earn $1800 per day for 20 years to reach the investition of $13000000 or $18000 per day for the next 2 years!

[Brad Gosse]

THis domain is the worst property online.

Nobody has ever done anything of value with it which is sad. I think it may even carry a curse because it seems to bankrupt all of it's owners.

In 2010 not many people type in domains anymore.

[Mangozoom]

Just goes to show that sex does sell!

John

[jorry]

I could use the domain or the money

[MagicAce]

Or You could use the money to get the domain. If you know what I mean!

[anupviews]

This is the Top 10 domain in the world ever registered!

[Steve Murphy]

Originally Posted by Mangozoom

Just goes to show that sex does sell!

John

The buyer had sure better hope so!!

Cheers,

Steve

[FredJones]

Lol, so the old owner was bankrupt? With $13 million he is certainly out of bankrupcy.

Along with the domain, did he also pass his bankrupcy to the new owner?

Ohh sorry bad joke...

But I am surprised - why should it make only $1800 per year? By the way, the Alexa rank is 70k-odd - so it is not that bad traffic either - as long as one knows how to best monetize it.

Maybe the best way to monetize it till yesterday was to flip the domian?

[mcmahanusa]

Originally Posted by Brad Gosse

In 2010 not many people type in domains anymore.

Brad, while I agree with you for the most part, it might be interesting to note that a number of websites that do not actually exist get a large number of visitors; for example, e.com, which does not exist (the registrar has never released it), gets 55,000 visitors per month, and f.com gets 33,000 per month. All this from people typing it into their browser bars.

We know that they are typed in because they are not ranked by the search engines, have never been in use, and have no links of any kind.

Many people (me included) frequently take en educated guess as to the correct URL for a company and type it in. If I'm interested in a Jeep, I just type in jeep.com and there I am. So if you have a simple URL, easily surmised, you might get some traffic that is not generated through the search engines.

Just sayin'

[AFI]

So they did solve the dispute over this domain? I remember one guy had registered it and he accidentally let it expire (or something to that effect) and another guy snatched it up and there was a big lawsuit about it.

They must have resolved it somehow.

[johnben1444]

So sex.com is that hot.

[David Hooper]

Originally Posted by AFI

So they did solve the dispute over this domain? I remember one guy had registered it and he accidentally let it expire (or something to that effect) and another guy snatched it up and there was a big lawsuit about it.

They must have resolved it somehow.

It's a great story. There are several interviews with him and articles about it online. Definitely worth a read.

[simaurile]

Originally Posted by King Shiloh

I have heard about this news before. BTW, why are some people spending so much money to just buy a domain name? Do they really see what might happen in the future?

Shiloh,

Domains like these are very usefull and can bring huge amount of money.The term 'sex' is searched on Google approx 5 Million times a day.

Imagine ranking NO.1 on a search term like this.Not only that,more than $5 Billion are spent every year on sexual toys and stuff.

The price they spent might take some time to recover but in the end,the profit is all theirs!



Sim Aurile

[hireava]

that's a lot of money for a "sex.com"

[Jacob Martus]

Originally Posted by mcmahanusa

Brad, while I agree with you for the most part, it might be interesting to note that a number of websites that do not actually exist get a large number of visitors; for example, e.com, which does not exist (the registrar has never released it), gets 55,000 visitors per month, and f.com gets 33,000 per month. All this from people typing it into their browser bars.

We know that they are typed in because they are not ranked by the search engines, have never been in use, and have no links of any kind.

Many people (me included) frequently take en educated guess as to the correct URL for a company and type it in. If I'm interested in a Jeep, I just type in jeep.com and there I am. So if you have a simple URL, easily surmised, you might get some traffic that is not generated through the search engines.

Just sayin'

But just think what could be done with a generic domain and a 13 million dollar SEO budget. Much more than 55k uniques/month I'd think! Hell, I spend like $130 a month on SEO and I'm pulling down almost that much traffic across all my sites. :P

[amrish2338]

But sex.com has not any bussiness .then why this sold for $13 million

[affiliatesea]

Sex.com has the potential to earn a lot,if they spend 1% of this money in building a nice website.

[djriel]

They're not going to make $13M back with that crappy site. It's barely 1 step above a parking page.

Man, could I do some keyword damage with that sucker

Funny how people with the money to buy these types of 'marquee' domains, usually don't have a clue on how to monetize them properly.

Oh well ...

[hyuuu]

reminds me of the first few days of having internet for the first time. I did not know what a search engine was (back in 1998) but being a teenager with raging hormones, I tried sex.com and see what's up haha

[theseoguys]

I am sure beer.com is bringing in bucket loads of money as is sex.com...I can't figure that sale price out either.

[jasonboom]

Originally Posted by AFI

So they did solve the dispute over this domain? I remember one guy had registered it and he accidentally let it expire (or something to that effect) and another guy snatched it up and there was a big lawsuit about it.

They must have resolved it somehow.

The story was actually that one man convinced the registrar to transfer the domain to him and it took something like five years for it to be returned to its rightful owner. The man who stole it made something like 10 million from the domain during that time and was forced to pay fees to the winner.

My details may be off so here's a link: The Story of Sex.com - Security from eWeek

[Marhelper]

Originally Posted by MagicAce

sex.com shoud earn $1800 per day for 20 years to reach the investition of $13000000 or $18000 per day for the next 2 years!

Probably not too hard to do.

[NetWorth]

Originally Posted by Jacob Martus

But just think what could be done with a generic domain and a 13 million dollar SEO budget. Much more than 55k uniques/month I'd think! Hell, I spend like $130 a month on SEO and I'm pulling down almost that much traffic across all my sites. :P

With a 13 million SEO budget I could get CatholicChurch.com to rank for the key word "sex"

[Dreamsight]

Who searches for just ‘sex’? It would be like searching for ‘car’ if you wanted to buy a Ford Escort. Surely today’s surfer is savvy enough to refine their search terms.
How can they possibly hope to get a return on that sort of outlay and what benefit could you get from a domain name that’s worth 13 mill. Just imagin what you could do with a 13 mill marketing budget and a newly registered domain name.
More money than sense, who said the .com bubble burst...

Didn’t this happen with business.com a few years back?

[jesus72knight]

The site surely can be a money-maker of the new owner is wise enough to do some modifications and marketing. But there are lots of porn sites out there. It is way too classic if someone still types in "sex.com" in their browsers.