Sex.com is Going Down

nathanielinbrazil writes "A motion to dismiss the involuntary bankruptcy of Sex.com has been filed in a California court. Operational turmoil has put its owner in the doghouse with its creditors, who want to take over. 'It's the best domain in the world by far,' said Mike Mann, who has tried to keep the creditors at bay. Sex.com is estimated to be worth $100m. Let the games begin!"

Re:Not worth that much i guess

[courteaudotbiz]

I totally agree. And even if someone is crazy enough to pay that much for sex.com, he's gonna have to know how to make money out of it. With all [persiankitty.com] this [redtube.com] free [youporn.com] porn [bulldoglist.com] available on the net, anyone trying to make money out of porn will have more and more difficulties, except with VERY HARDCORE users who will always be willing to pay for higher quality videos, false interactions (sex chat) and all that stuff...

I don't go there

[DNS-and-BIND]

Anyone out there who actually makes it a habit to go to sex.com? Frankly I've never heard of them since the big sale however many years ago that was. And who goes to business.com? Sure, they're generic keywords with .com behind them, but honestly where's the value in a name?

Re:It might have been valuable back in 1998 or so

[tverbeek]

The intersection of those two sets is huge. I staff a corporate help desk and I talk to dozens of people a week who don't know the difference between the URL field and the search field.

Re:Not worth that much i guess

[vikingpower]

You forgot slutload.com ....

Re:Not worth that much i guess

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem with sex.com: About 10 years ago, the domain name got transfered owner under "suspicious circumstances", which resulted in a lawsuit, which resulted in an injunction from the name from being used. The legal battle has raged on since (which is why if you go to sex.com you see it pretty much parked).

It's not that the name is worthless - it's that there's pretty much no content at the site, the legal battle is not over, and the owner has run out of money, which is why creditors want to take it over.

Re:Not worth that much i guess

[Archon-X]

I'm sorry, but like most people that don't work in the industry, you don't have a clue how it operates, the margins it runs, the advertising structures, etc etc.

The largest tube sites are either owned by the latest porn sites (brazzers, etc) - or make huge amounts from selling ad spots (Redtube: minimum 150k for a well placed 30 day spot). Guess what - they're 'making money out of porn' - just not in the older constructs of a paysite.

I personally dropped $125,000 on highly-niched domain a few months back, and we're already at 85% ROI. Interesting factoid: Both youporn and persiankitty, and hundreds more 'free porn sites' promote it, and make quite nice sums off it too.

In brief: Your understanding of how the market works even on a fundamental level is completely flawed.