ICM Registry Giving $75 Search.XXX Advertising Credit to Registrants

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In a bid to “reward existing .XXX adult site owners and encourage new registrants,” the ICM Registry announced a $75 Search.XXX advertising credit (valid for 90 days) to .XXX domain name owners. The advertising platform has not been launched yet.

The company also announced that its seen 2  millions visits and 12 million pageviews to its Search.XXX adult search engine, making the advertising credit seem like a pretty solid incentive for someone who is developing their .XXX domain name(s).

Let’s say you go to Name.com  (or another registrar) and you register YourFavoriteFetish.XXX for $84.99 and launch a white label adult website. You’ll receive a $75 credit for advertising on Search.XXX, so you can immediately be able to drive traffic to your new site and hopefully begin to earn revenue.

101Domain.com  has an even better offer, essentially giving full value in advertising for registering a domain name: “Sponsored Community customers can renew or register with us for one year at $75 and get the entire amount credited towards ad credits on Search.xxx !”

I have no idea what type of traffic you’d be able to drive with the $75 you’ll be given, nor do I know adult conversion rates and RPC numbers, but it seems like a reasonable offer and a good way to start making money with your .XXX domain names.

I highly doubt the company will permit parked names to use these credits though.

Press Release:

.XXX: “Over 1,000 Premium Generic Keyword Domain Names” Available for Sale

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I received a press release that will be of interest to people who have invested in .XXX domain names. ICM Registry, the company that operates the .XXX registry, has announced the release of “over 1,000  premium generic keyword domain names.” The names will be available on a first come, first served basis.

Many of these keywords were determined to be premium based on searches of the ICM Registry’s Search.XXX search engine, which went live at the end of September. It looks like the company has a custom landing page with a blue “Buy Now” landing strip across the top. Interested buyers are requested to make an offer on the name via form.

According to the company, these keyword domain names should benefit the owners, as the company skews towards exact match domain names in Search.XXX results. According to the press release, “the algorithm that search.xxx uses gives weighting to exact match domains with highly developed content and so these newly released names , once developed and listed, will feature prominently in search results for the most popular keywords.”

This seems like this is a good way to increase the value of keyword .XXX domain names.

You can see a list of names that are now available on the ICM Registry website, along with the prices. Based on the offer form though, it seems like there might be some room for negotiation. As Kevin posted this morning, the company hopes to raise over $7.7 million by selling these domain names.

Press Release below:

Conan.XXX Video: “Big Dick, Little Chicks”

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I don’t remember hearing about this, but Conan O’Brien launched an adult-themed website on Conan.XXX, and it features funny videos that probably couldn’t be shown on his television show. With a tagline “The Third X is for XXX,” you just know it’s going to be funny.

Using a .XXX domain name to distinguish what is adult from what is safe for everyone is a smart marketing move. The “.XXX” makes it seem more risque, and I am sure that is helping boost the visitor count for Conan.

I want to share a video from the site featuring comedian Will Ferrell. If you are easily offended, I recommend that you don’t click the play button.

Video: Chris Sheridan from eNom on gTLDs

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I want to share a video with you featuring Chris Sheridan, Vice President of Business Development at eNom. In the embedded video, Mr. Sheridan speaks with Michelle Zatlyn, who is head of User Experience and Co-Founder at CloudFlare.

The conversation focuses on new areas of growth for eNom, and Sheridan discusses the new gTLDs and their impact. If you want to skip to that point in the discussion, fast forward to the 2:00 minute mark of the video.

In case you are wondering, the video was recorded at HostingCon in Boston a couple of weeks ago.

Video: Michele Neylon Shows The Difficulty in Submitting gTLD Comments

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I want to share a video with you that was posted by Michele Neylon, CEO of Blacknight, a domain registrar and hosting company. In the video, Michele walks people through the process of posting a comment on ICANN’s gTLD website for the the gTLD applications

Based on Michele’s experience, and as you can see, it seems like ICANN needs to make adjustments to the comment submission form to make it easier to provide feedback and insight. ICANN has said that it welcomes comments about the new gTLDs from the general public, but if it’s difficult to provide this feedback, people will be less likely to share.

It seems like there are issues with almost everything related to the gTLDs.

Thanks to Kevin Murphy for sharing the video.

Will You Invest in gTLDs?

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When new gTLDs become publicly available (probably in 2013 from what I’ve heard and read), there are going to be many changes in the domain space. I really don’t know ultimately what’s going to happen to the aftermarket, but I’ve always sought to be flexible with my business, buying when I sense opportunity.

Out of curiosity, right now, do you anticipate that you will invest in gTLD domain names? I’m not referring to buying or investing in a registry, but rather, purchasing domain names in the new extensions? I know that many readers don’t care about gTLD domain names, but I am wondering if that means you won’t invest given the opportunity.

I invite you to discuss in the comment section.