Sex.com is a domain name with history fascinating enough for a book to be written solely about it.
For a domain name, what could possibly be catchier than sex.com?
Originally registered by entrepreneur Gary Kremen on May 9, 1994, the domain was soon hijacked by convicted conman Stephen Cohen. Cohen was challenged in court, but it took Kremen five years to recover the domain, during which time Cohen was reportedly making up to $500,000 a month from advertising on the site.
Escom LLC reportedly purchased Sex.com in January 2006. The domain had almost as turbulent a time under Escom’s ownership. A fight broke out between the company’s creditors in early 2010 when one of them pushed the domain to auction.
Sex.com was then sold for $13 million by Escom to Clover Holdings on 18 November 2010. This sale, which was brokered by domain marketplace operator Sedo, has resulted in a Guinness World Record for “most expensive internet address domain name”.
Now, aren’t you keen to figure out what the new owner will do with it? Is Clover Holdings going to simply jump into the online porn industry? Well, seems not. Clover thinks such an endeavor would close the door on other, more mainstream options, narrow down exit possibilities like selling to a public company and limit the ability to take the business public in the future. Clever, no?
The new owner is still figuring the best way to develop the domain name, leaving the page untouched and ad-littered, but the company reveals that the revenues received from Sex.com already far exceed his expectations and it predicts the page is on track to return well into seven figures a year.
That means that even if the company ends up never doing anything with it other than forwarding the domain name to a parked page, it could potentially still make $13 million from the domain by 2024, earning back the investment.
