The Registry reports are out for April 2012, and it looks like ICM registry the owner of .XXX extension is up to 134,884 registrations.
As of December 2011, the month .XXX launched, they reported 106K registrations, so they have added almost 30K domain registrations in 4 months.
(Even though we are in August we are talking about the most recent Registry reports which are for April)
Godaddy is the has almost 25% of all registrations.
Neither of these numbers include the ten year blocks offered by ICM during the Sunrise Period which may have totaled as high as 80,000 domains based off the numbers released by ICM in December, or domain reserved by the registry.
George Kirikos says
It’s more informative to look at the month-to-month changes for .xxx. The April 2012 report was at 134,884 domains, whereas the March 2012 report was at 132,579. Thus, they added a mere 2305 domains in a month, less than 100/day.
Furthermore, I believe those numbers were when GoDaddy still had them as 10th in their drop down listbox of extensions. Now, they are *last* in the list. According to Registrarstats.com TLD Domain counts, their pace of new registrations is now even lower, i.e. typically under 20 per day (e.g. yesterday, that site reports only 6, yes SIX, new registrations).
December/January (renewal time for many of the registrations) will be a big test, to see whether they can sustain a 70%+ renewal rate. With lack of adoption by the adult industry, and a tough economy, I think many registrants will let their .xxx domains drop.
Michael H. Berkens says
George It depends on how many of those 136K are defensive
If 70% are defensive you might see 100% renewal rate on those, and maybe a 50% on non-defensive.
I don’t think you will non-defensive .XXX renewal rates at any higher than 50% unless there is some dramatic developments before December
Ben Elza says
One of the most important strategies that can kill a product no matter how great it is , especially in tough economic times, is called PRICING. If pricing is not set right or adjusted quickly as a response to the massive change in the industry, it can kill both the product and the company softly.
FOE says
I bought 4 at $80.00 or more a piece. I’m kind of feeling that I got taken. I got a few pretty cool names.. But, who actually sits at a browser and types in Ridethis.xxx? They are more likely going to type in ridethis.com. Oh well. I probably won’t renew them unless they pick up.
Paul says
Ridethis.xxx LOL That’s a good one.
I think the dot xxx extension rec’d plenty of defensive registrations, but also a lot of interest from domain speculators. Folks who were hoping to churn and burn. I’m not in that game. Any dot xxx domain I own, I intend to develop. My investment in dot xxx was always from an end user’s perspective. So I can’t speak for those who hoped to get rich quick.
I think it takes time for any new extension to solidify. As with dot com, I don’t think just any domain name will succeed. It will come down to the quality of the domain name, but far more importantly, the quality of the content. This whole business of flipping domain names? No thanks. Too much uncertainty.
One thing that is certain… sex sells. It always has. It always will. Dot xxx will succeed. However, it’s going to take time to separate the wheat from the chaff.
ezcoms says
It’s funny what you’ll find when you search your own domains.
I own Ridethis.xxx and registered it around 06/2012. I bought 3 other .XXX domains at almost $100 a piece. By far Ridethis and Fatasses.xxx get the most traffic without advertising. In the month of October Ridethis saw 14,000 visits through Search.xxx alone. I saw the XXX pointless before that new search engine came to be. Also honestly, nothing beats .com, .net, .org.
And you’re right, who is going to naturally type in RIDETHIS.XXX?