Pharmaceutical companies have approached the new owner of sex.com, proposing partnerships. Image: Flickr / loauc / CC-BY-SA
Guinness World Records has officially announced that Sex.com sets the record as most expensive domain ever purchased. The owner of the website, however, has said he “does not have immediate plans for commercialization.”
Guinness recognizes most expensive domain
Guinness World Records certified today that sex.com is “the most expensive internet address domain name.” The domain was sold via domain-broker company Sedo, which has also sold other high-value domain names. Pizza.com, Vodka.com and Russia.com all sold for seven figures in the last few years. While these short, succinct dot-com domains are valued very highly, new domains such as .xxx are also being eyed by investors. Sex.com set the record with its $13 million price tag in January of this year.
Sex.com may have been an impulse buy
While the new owner of sex.com prefers to remain anonymous, he did grant an interview to TechCrunch. Right now, sex.com redirects to an advertising site with no content of its own. The owner of the website has said that he has “no immediate plans” to commercialize the website, though he does have a team “working on possibilities.” Escom, LLC, the previous owner of sex.com, had to file bankruptcy when it was not able to commercialize the website effectively. Reports are that the 125,000 visitors a day bring in “seven figures a year.”
Possibilities for commercializing sex.com
While advertising is bringing in seven figures for the most expensive domain in the world, the owners are considering other possibilities. Sex.com may eventually become a pharmaceutical website, technology website or the obvious — an adult website. The goal of the owner is to create a business model that would allow sex.com to become a publicly offered company. Having a business model focused on adult content would not prevent sex.com from creating a public company. Playboy and New Frontier Media are both publicly traded, adult-industry companies.
