Mike Mann Speaks His Mind about Sex.com
Friday, February 19th, 2010
Sex.com investor tells his side of the story.
Mike Mann, who founded BuyDomains, is always one to speak his mind. So when news broke yesterday that Sex.com, in which he was a part investor, was going into foreclosure, he didn’t hesitate to speak up.
“I am merely an investor who got completely railroaded by other investors with big guns, bad practices, and bad attitudes,” Mann wrote via e-mail. “I am always up for a good fight since any money I would make was already predesignated to innovative charities. I represent those charitable recipients always, I socked away enough for myself a long time ago, and I was never concerned about material wealth anyhow, the charitable works came first. I like to be clear about what I’m doing here.”
Mann is well known for his charitable activities, especially since selling BuyDomains. He’s perhaps best known for Grassroots.org, which offers free web services to charities.
The entities listed on the Sex.com foreclosure notice are not all debtors, but there are common links. The actual debtor is Escom, LLC.
Andrew Miller, co-founder of Internet Real Estate Group (IREG), continues to deny that the company had any involvement with Sex.com. Reached by phone yesterday to comment about Sex.com, Miller said, “I know nothing about it. Zero.” He called back a few minutes later to note that there may be some common investors between IREG and Escom, but that IREG itself is not involved.
So what does Mann think about Sex.com’s prospects at auction?
“This is clearly the best domain in the world that is for sale, the type in traffic is worth like 20M for the life of the asset at least, then add branding, uniqueness, shortness, global ubiquity, and someone building a real viral asset and brand development on top of all that, if I had access to 25M I’d easily be a buyer, someone will build it and exit for 50-100M Im sure.”
We’ll find out if anyone else agrees when the auction takes place next month.
Further Reading:
- Mike Mann Claims Sex.com Over $10 Million in Debt
- Sex.com Sale Still On, But Mike Mann Accused of “Self-Dealing”
- Rick Schwartz Buys Deathers.com from Mike Mann
Tags: sex.com
sounds like someone wants to increase the value of sex.com
doesn’t worth that much IMO
pornography business was falling and will continue to fall where one day it will be banned from almost everywhere.
its banned in china, middle east, and most of the world has censors for children, its matter of time where it will be banned in the rest of the world.
unless someone wants to buy it and build an awareness website against porn thats another story.
[...] via Elliot’s Blog: Sex.com For Sale in Foreclosure Auction. Other interesting reads and on DomainNameWire and TechCrunch. Related Posts:Repost: Domaining.com to Offer Valuate Technology to Rate Blog [...]
LOL @Bashar Al-Abdulhadi
Welcome to the 21st century. Please feel free to remove you your head from the sand at any time.
For the rest of you, especially the women, please cover up because as Bashar Al-Abdulhadi says, we are all going back to the future. Also, my clothes needs ironing.
Bashar makes some valid points but there is one guarantee – Sex is not going away.
Therefore, there will always be natural type-in traffic.
The question is –
Is there a way to monetize the traffic?
Sex is never ever going away. Not for Bill Clinton, not for me or anyone else. I will pay anything for this domain.
TW.
If there is such thing as funds looking to buy premium domains as passive long-term investment, they should be all over this one.
This domain is Jinxed
just look at the history of it. Only one person has ever made money with it aside from the sale of the domain
Call me whatever you like folks, but the comment Mr. Miller made regarding “for the life of the asset” was the most interesting to me. I read an interesting article just yesterday how the “old” VCR tapes fade over time and a cool way to preserve them digitally. Anyway, do we expect .coms to similarly fade? Is there a shelf life that is accepted as common knowledge that I missed along the way? Did he mean for the life of the asset up to this point? I’m being serious, if I misinterpeted I regress. I have been going under the theory that therein lies the ultimate value of these assets, they are as tasty today as they will be 50,000 todays from now. That even if someone screwed up the “brand” that is sex.com (if possible to do so), that it would STILL generate a zillion directs a year. Next year, 20 years, 200 years. Ahh.. let me put it this way, when does the life of a domain name end?
I would take porn.com over sex.com any time. And Mann is a nutcase anyway.
I believe it would be sold around $15 to $20 millions at least under normal circumstances but anything could happen due to the nature of auction.
It’s a monster domain that deserves a well thought out business plan. Something beyond the standard adult subscription model.
I actually think it has more potential than porn.com. There’s a reason why half of Cosmopolitan’s articles are related to sex. Properly run, there’s advertising, product sales, jvs and a host of other ways to make money with it.
The point is that most of us automatically think of “hard core” in relation to sex.com. There’s a much broader audience beyond that.
dfg,
I like Michael.
Didn’t your mother teach you -
“If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything.”
Isn’t the value of domains because the renewal fees are cheap? What happens if they go up 30%? They are still cheap. What happens if they triple? They are still cheap. Some portfolios might get smaller.
What happens if the renewal fees accrued to Verisign through the Registrars go into the hundreds, or the thousands? What if renewal fees vary based on the perceived value of that domain, by the Registrars?
Would it affect the value, or resale value of the domain? Domains are valuable now because the maintenance cost is almost nil.
Hhhmmm…
“I socked away enough for myself a long time ago, and I was never ”
followed by…
So what does Mann think about Sex.com’s prospects at auction?
“This is clearly the best domain in the world that is for sale… if I had access to 25M I’d easily be a buyer, someone will build it and exit for 50-100M Im sure.”
I guess that sock is rather small or he just wants the name to sale for more than they paid.
@dfgdfg
I’ll answer your comment in the language you seem to identify with: “adfaf jdkwjk r3999, fhw4t fosoio fafeyt0gg. O weng4nn, dfg df yy eehhhsdrlds ura 5poosay3f xand uhchk enshet.”
This is some serious pumping.
@Stephen Douglas
Youre on quite a roll lately lol
Quote -
“@Stephen Douglas
Youre on quite a roll lately lol”
Stephen gave up sex for Lent.
So, he has nothing else to do.
@ Josh
I’m checking the pulse of the domain industry… looking for it, at least!
How can Andrew Miller claim to not have any involvement in sex.com if he’s listed as the owner in 6 of 12 companies on the foreclosure notice. And 3 others are associated with Mike Mann, and Mike Mann owns a largest stake in sex.com
Little wonder that sex.com was run into the ground when neither Mike Man or Andrew Miller have no clue about adult industry what so ever.
I’m pretty sure whoever is gonna end up with this domain name is buying himself a huge legal bill as well.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nz6ErhG70ws
my video about the case.
(Notify me of followup comments via e-mail)
I agree, Mike Mann is a nutcase! ‘Nuff said.
Agree : whoever is gonna end up with this domain name is buying himself a huge legal bill as well
I don’t understand why a buyer would have any legal problems. I’m sure there’s plenty of signed documents saying that if the debtors didn’t pay their bill, the creditor gets the domain.
Worth at least 1M of M.
Sure, REIT has nothing to cope with that. The Forclosure Notice must have a typo!
@ Bernard – I assume you mean IREG. I verified with the lawyer who sent the notice and he said not everyone on their is an owner. You’ll notice that Andrew Miller is the contact for Escom, and he also is with IREG. So it appears they were just trying to make sure the notice was served to everyone.
Anonymous scammers, say it to my face
[...] auction is still scheduled for March 18. Clearly, there are some disagreements amongst Escom LLC investors. There was early indication from one of the investors that there might [...]
It looks from the comments, that Mike Mann doesn’t have the $25 million. Or does he and he doesn’t want it anymore? I don’t know about that.
[...] earlier comments to Domain Name Wire, Mann said “I am merely an investor who got completely railroaded by [...]