Sex.com Sold to Escom LLC For "around $12M"

[companyone]

Hi,

Sex.com Sold to Escom LLC For $14M
By Gretchen Gallen
Wednesday, January 18, 2006


SAN FRANCISCO – The infamous and controversial domain Sex.com has officially been sold to Boston-based Escom LLC for a reported $14 million, XBiz has learned.

Sex.com owner Gary Kremen was unavailable for comment, but a source from Kremen’s company, Grant Media, told XBiz that sales for the famous domain name will still be handled through Grant Media’s San Francisco offices.

While other terms of the acquisition remain unknown, XBiz was able to locate information on the deal through a company called InternetRealEstate.com, which shares office space in Boston with Domain Name Acquisition Group (DNAG), a company that was involved in a lawsuit surrounding the Sex.com domain in September.

InternetRealEstate.com is owned by Internet Real Estate Group LLC Partners, which has been involved in the acquisition, development and sale of domain names like Beer.com for $7 million, Telephone.com for $2 million, Shop.com for $3.5 million, and others such as Computer.com, College.com, Diamond.com, Timeshares.com and CreditCard.com.

A principal of InternetRealEstate.com told XBiz that his company has nothing to do with Escom and has no affiliations with DNAG either, although the company President Andrew Miller and CEO Peter Hubshman were both named as defendants in the DNAG/Sex.com lawsuit and both names appear on the InternetRealEstate.com website.

InternetRealEstate.com’s former name, Deal Jam LLC, also was named in the Sex.com lawsuit, before it became known as Internet Real Estate Group.

The company principal said that while he was aware of the Sex.com sale to Escom, he denied any affiliations between InternetRealEstate.com and the new owner of the Sex.com domain name.

Prior to learning of the sale of Sex.com, numerous adult industry message board postings had already begun speculating on the sale after noticing the radical change in the appearance of the Sex.com website. On the homepage of the updated website, the new owners refer to the site as “the new Sex.com,” and the appearance is radically different from the former site. The site is copyrighted by Escom.

Kremen has been shopping around the Sex.com domain for the past year. In previous interviews with XBiz, he has expressed interest in getting out of the adult business.

The Sex.net domain is still registered under Kremen's Grant Media company.

* I am not posting the link to the aricle, because it comes from some sort of xxx porn site.


Dan

 

[insomnia]

Hmm, was it worth it? I think its worth more than 14m.

 

[Rarethings]

More than 14M??

I know sex sells, but this one is just crazy.

 

[Mr. Deleted]

ONLY 14M? wow, I would have thought it would be more then that.

 

[insomnia]

Its such a value domain, the internet will only grow from this point forward. You could have 14m to spend/invest in this lifetime, or you can have an asset that pays the bills and then some. An asset that you can pass down to take care of your family for up to a few generations! Surely worth more than 14m to me.

 

[hugegrowth]

I think it seems low too. I mean, it's a top 10 or
top 5 keyword. When you think of all the billion
dollar businesses out there, 14M is a drop in the bucket
for an asset like that. Further evidence that the
business world hasn't fully grasped the power of
a premium domain. It's still a nice chunk of money
for the seller, though. I wonder what this name will
sell for next time?

 

[GT Web]

no less than 3 threads about this sale I have found so far...

I think its worth more, but then again, I'm not the one shelling out millions for it.

 

[WhoDatDog]

I can't imagine selling that name for that low of a price. It doesn't seem right. 40 million would have been about right. There are only a few "Holy Grail" types of names, and this one will always be on the short list of great names.

 

[labrocca]

If it's a private seller I would think $14 million is a fair sum. No reason to get greedy. $14 million is enough to set yourself up for a long time. Land, homes and vacations could easily be the rest of your life starting NOW. $14 million or $25 million or $50 million..does it really matter all that much.

 

[Luc]

it may be worth more to a company that actually knows what to do with it. i know kremen had a pretty lame plan and never got 10% of what the domain could make with the right people & site. if he pushed the site to the limits he'd be able to make about $5mil/year on it no sweat, but instead he was making peanuts.

 

[Focus]

yeah the site always sucked in my opinion...and not in a good way...they needed to have alot more content there and not just some lame affiliate links and traffic rotation like was set-up...there is probably ALOT more to the deal than $14 Million...I can guarantee he is tied into a % cut forever or at least a term

 

[pelican]

probably he and the current owner might have some other deals...such as recurring profit sharing for 10 years or so.

 

[paulc]

what did the site used to be before it sold - just a porn site?

 

[Focus]

it was like a lame rotating portal to other porn sites...I think all affiliate

 

[Luc]

yeah. except for the porn part. he didn't actually allow sexually explicit images on there so the whole sex site was links to other sex sites on which you'd have to verify first that you are at least 18. the whole thing was a big joke.

 

[hugegrowth]

Lame or not, for the amount of time he had to spend on
the site it probably made a good constant return.

 

[Steen]

If it's a private seller I would think $14 million is a fair sum. No reason to get greedy. $14 million is enough to set yourself up for a long time. Land, homes and vacations could easily be the rest of your life starting NOW. $14 million or $25 million or $50 million..does it really matter all that much.

$14M, 25M or 50M? I see a huge difference in what you're able to do with the respective sums.

I can guarantee he is tied into a % cut forever or at least a term

Do you have something to share that the rest of us don't know? Or is this just a made up prediction?

it was like a lame rotating portal to other porn sites...I think all affiliate

Sex.com, which will soon be Sex.net is a pay-per-click engine similar to Overture. Most of the traffic was not domain name type-ins, so the sale of sex.com may not affect the business too much.

 

[Andrew Shaw]

14M is very low in my opinion... next to business.com, sex.com is one of the most valuable domain names. wouldnt you agree?

 

[Mr. Deleted]

what I find interesting is the porn.xxx, p***y.xxx, sex.xxx at the bottem of sex.net, are the trying to promote those urls so they can claim the addresses in a wipo in case .xxx works out?

 

[Rarethings]

^. I noticed that too...