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I am dropping my remaining .XXX domain names and getting out of the extension.
I registered about 30 .XXX domain names back in 2011 when the extension first launched. Most were 1 word domains related to adult content.
These were and are expensive domains with renewals at about $80 per year so it was a big deal back then. Of course New gTLDs came out in early 2014 and now $100, $200 or $400+ domain name renewals are common.
So I kept these domains for a few years and last year I dropped 20 of them leaving me with 10. These domains were not getting any offers and weren’t getting any traffic either. And of course I had made no sales.
This year, 5 years after the .XXX launch, I accepted that I will not ever be making any money of .xxx domains. So I will be dropping 8 more of these domains this November.
Probably at this point I am comparing these .xxx domains with other similar priced new gtlds and find no reason why I should keep these expensive and inferior .xxx domains. I am hard pressed and really put a lot of thought every year into renewing New gTLDs of similar pricing. I have less than 10 New gTLDs with a renewal higher than $110 per year. And these domains are a great leaft-right keyword combination with thousands of searches per month.
Also my experience so far has been that even adult .com domains are hard to sell. And most adult content providers prefer .com.
I will be keeping 2 domains. One because it is the only .xxx I got inquiries over the years, eshop.xxx, and one because for some reason it gets traffic. Probably because there is a similar domain with some adult content on it.
ICM Registry also launched the .sex, .adult, and .porn New gTLDs in 2015. I bought none of these. I did not even use the domain matching program that was designed for owners of .xxx domains. .XXX owners had priority over any matching .sex, .adult, and .porn domain.
So I had zero success with .XXX domains over the past 5 years and zero sales. This makes it probably my worst domain name investment. A loss so far of over $10,000 in registration fees and renewals.
If others had better luck with .xxx domains I would like to hear how they did it. Maybe my sample size was not enough or my domains not good enough. 30 domains is not that large of a number but that above was my experience.
Adult domains are indeed hard to sell – unless they have traffic.
Adult webmasters use a lot of throw-away/low quality domain names.
They don’t have the same branding concerns as brick and mortar businesses to say the least 😉
I have an adult domain that gets 15,000 uniques per month, do you how many clicks you need to simply make $10, alot. They are not what they used to be in the early days, I just avoid that space, but not many buyers for that niche anymore so it’s ok to carry a $8 .com, but $80 .xxx not so much.
I have 3 popular female first names in this niche in .xxx, every year I say the same thing, but last minute I waste like you said $80 again, and again.
With all the new GTLD’s .xxx is not as needed as it once was, their are other options, no need to keep paying the renewals, I will be losing the bleed with mine also.
I had a very popular female name all over the world: nothing!
what do you think about eMovies.xxx ?
$0. Sorry
i’ve dropped most of mine already. hanging on to a couple but not a single inquiry or sale.
Should have dropped them earlier.
Many people are going to waste money on new gtlds. Sad. 🙁
@Konstantinos,
If it makes you feel any better, I lost 3 times as much on .XXX as you did. About $30k. Originally, the ICM Registry had said that matching .ADULT, .PORN, and .SEX domains would be awarded at no cost to the .XXX registrant; so .XXX renewals seemed like a good bet.
Then the registry reversed that promise. Effectively, we were handed an ultimatum: Either pay quadruple the price to secure all 4 or else be undercut on 3 fronts by competing domains for sale. At that point, 2 years ago, I was 2 renewal cycles into the investment. But the writing was on the wall. I dumped everything.
During that time, I did sell a few .XXX domains. And not my better names either. There would have been plenty of market value here, I think; but the registry double-crossed investors. Once holding costs go up by a factor of 4 or competition is multiplied by 4, it’s just not worthwhile.
Adult webmasters are cheapskates for the most part anyway, and they had opposed the ICM registry vociferously from the beginning. Yet some were buying and making offers. Until the ICM Registry reversed its policy.
For awhile, I was considering a lawsuit over this. However, they pointed the finger at ICANN, pretending they were forced to quadruple rates. And ICANN policy did cast a shadow just large enough for the registry to hide in.
New gtld registries can do pretty much whatever they want pricing wise so hiding behing ICANN is simply ridiculous. ICM registry screwed everybody.
$30k… damn…
Unfortunately, generally speaking, I see way more losses coming from those who invested in other new gTLDs.
Many are just junk, very hard to sell (when sellable …) and a big waste of money, no serious (corporate) end user will ever purchase them.
Those $80 or hundreds $/year renewals are just plain scams … 🙂
Thanks God we have ZERO new gTLDs.
CORRECT: “a big waste of money AND TIME”.
This is not a domain investor TLD, unless one delves into adult content directly. Check GFY .com for adult domain webmaster advice. There are many ways to monetize adult domains, although it’s not a good idea to hold onto a large cache of domains that generate no money.
Not sure how you expense such losses by the way. In the US, assuming you take the capital gains route, at the time you drop the domains you add up all the renewal expenses as losses.
We just treat them as expenses at the time of the renewal. I don’t think there is any other way here… 🙁
.xxx is not new gtld how I know it is “.aero” and “.travel” generation, and it had some restrictions to run a website, you should be in porno industry or something like this.
There were no real restrictions.
I bought a few adult domains but no luck.
Finally tried my hand in financial services domains, like nerdbanking.com, creditInsurer.com, financewtf.com, overdueCredit.com, loanbuddha.com etc etc
Thinking to sell them too as selling is very difficult. I hope I can start a decent offline business.
It hurts, but ya gotta know when to walk away
.sex is much better.
I have just 5 .sex domains. All of them have some small type in traffic (5-20 unique visitors a day) four of them with regular 80$ renewal price, and one two-letter domain $270.
And I already have offers for two of them usa.sex and xxxvideo.sex both of them with regular $80 renewal price.
usa.xxx registry registered 🙂
“xxxvideo.sex”: SELL!!!
I’ll wait when website in plural version “xxxvideos dot sex” will be more popular! 😉 It’s live!
You don’t understand how the adult industry works, they do not pay for alt type names.
If you have single keyword category killers, park, and wait for the right buyer, otherwise stuff like xxxkeyword.sex sell, the plural is worthless.
I don’t need to understand how the adult industry works. It’s not my business! )
I registered xxxvideo.sex when it was just $9 sale, one week later, some one from Greece ) registered xxxvideos and later created website.
“Plural” is not my domain.
I got offer just $1K. Not big money to worry about.
If you don’t want to sell that is ok, but you shouldn’t expect anything more than $1,000 from my fellow Greek.
Offers don’t stay valid forever, your a dreamer for sure
Maybe he just doesn’t want to sell…
*registry reserved
“This domain has been reserved from registration.”
Ha! Crystal ball not needed to know that you will be saying the exact same thing about your new gtlds very shortly. GTLD= Good To Lose Dinero.
I don’t worry about “Dinero”! To be successful in new gtld you have to buy smart! I doing this for less than two years, two years ago (!) I had ZERO of any domains at all, but this is a common sense to buy nice domains which fit to extensions.
And if I’ll decide to sell my new gtld, not all of them, only those of them which already got the real offers, it will cover all of my expenses which I did for new gtld 5-6 times, right away!
I have even .fish domains, Really?! Fish?!! YES!!! Just 3 of them.
FRESH.FISH WEB.FISH NET.FISH
All of them reg price just $24 and I got them at GA without paying extra money.
And for each of them I already got, not big, but reasonable for now offers 300-800 USD., and it only after few months when I registered them.
Long domains which I have are only two .marketing domains, but they are tele.marketing and sales.marketing
For each of them I got good offers. Try to register them even in .info or .biz etc (!)
I just found Microsoft Corporation owns salesmarketing biz – Really! 🙂
.FISH seems like a very good domain for you! It’s too bad you can’t catch much in a desert!
I never really got into the .xxx extension. I haven’t really seen much momentum with it over the years either. I thunk that a lot of people took a loss on this one.
Buyitnow.xxx is a great domain for the selling of adult products
It is garbage. Sorry.