.XXX Has Grossed $10 Million Already [Updated]
Monday, October 24th, 2011
ICM Registry has already pocketed 8 figures from .xxx.
.XXX Registry ICM Registry has already taken in $10 million for the .xxx launch…and general availability hasn’t even started.
ICM Registry has received 42,000 applications for .xxx domain names with just five days remaining in the sunrise period. At an average application fee of $200 this means registrants have already forked over $8.4 million to get (or block) .xxx domain names. ICM Registry gets about $162 per sunrise application, so that comes out to $6.8M from sunrise so far. Combined with founders sales and other revenue the registry has hit about $10 million in sales.
The sunrise applications are five times as many as ICM Registry anticipated. If trademark holders are like many other businesses, we can expect a flurry of applications before the sunrise period ends this Friday so the numbers will grow.
.XXX has benefited from some savvy (and expensive) marketing, lots of free press, and intellectual property lawyers selling fear to their clients.
It will be interesting to see how the final numbers come out, but this is certainly a boon to the domain name industry.
[Updated story with $10 million figure and more revenue details.]
Further Reading:
I think a good business would be to launch a new tld and sell the company just before general availability starts, or maybe 2 months after. Only problem is you have a small window of time to sell.
Why is it a boon ( think you ment boom ) to anyone but the founders?
42,000 applications. Nice domain name in this extension are maybe already gone.
@ Josh -
boon (noun) – A thing that is helpful or beneficial.
Why? The registrars have grossed over $8m on applications and ICM is pumping a lot of money into the domain industry through advertising, sponsorship, etc.
The irony is domainers have seen adult traffic lose value every year for many years and domainers are the ones driving the sales.
@ Domainer Extraordinaire – I think very little of the $10M is from domainers. Probably $2M or so in “founders” domain purchases are domainers. Most of the money so far is from sunrise, which is protecting brands.
This is one very smart company.
1)First get all the people to pre apply for names of interest.
2) Then sell some of the best names in private “Founders Deals”
3) Announce high priced deals to public.
4) Then just before Sunrise A block all very popular names left as “Reserved by ICM Registry for Premium Generic Domain Names Program”
4) With little great domain left, people will compete heavily for the scraps.
5) Once the scraps receive very high prices in Sunrise A auctions, release the held back good names for really high dollar amount.
Good way to srew over all the trademark and adult name holders in other extensions.
Probably the woest rollout to the public yet, but a huge money maker for the registry.
Goodbye to the relative past fairness to domain rollouts, surely if ICM gets away with it, all who follow will copy.
Just saying ……