Quick Poll: Which Domain Is Worth More Sex.com or Dating.com?

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One of the readers of the blog suggested I ask this question in light of Moniker.com press release today saying that the domain name dating.com would be included in the Domainfest Ft. Lauderdale Auction.

As you know Sex.com is now subject to a bankruptcy proceeding.

One of the part owners of the company that owns the domain Sex.com has stated that the domain is worth $50 Million.

Others including myself feel Sex.com is worth less today than the last time it sold for a reported $12M-$14M.

So the questions is which do you think is more valuable, Dating.com (no reserve range has been announced yet) or Sex.com?

With dating.com and sex.com both possibly going to auction shortly we may find out soon.

Make your picks on the right and comment below

About Michael Berkens

Michael Berkens, Esq. is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of TheDomains.com. Michael is also the co-founder of Worldwide Media Inc. which sold around 70K domain to Godaddy.com in December 2015 and now owns around 8K domain names . Michael was also one of the 5 Judges selected for the the Verisign 30th Anniversary .Com contest.

Comments

  4. Michael says

    LMAO @ Tony

    I voted for Dating.com. As many people mentioned when the news of Sex.com broke, it’s very difficult to monetize adult domains with all the free content out there.

    However, sites like eHarmony.com, Match.com, Chemistry.com, and PlentyOfFish.com have a license to print money right now, and Dating.com could steal a lot of market share.

  5. MHB says

    Larry

    According to Compete.com the site doesn’t have crazy traffic

    http://siteanalytics.compete.com/dating.com/?src=ff-tb

    Alexa either:

    http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/http%3A%2F%2Fwww.dating.com#

    Actually a lot less than sex.com and a lot less than I would have thought

    Looks like they have a trademark on Dating.com Wondering if they are including it in the sale.

    I think this domain is also like cheesecakes.com where the owner has tried to make a go of it and is appearently is giving up.

  6. Domo says

    I wouldn’t trust compete at al.

    I have several parked pages showing from 1000 to 6000 uniqe/views per month (for the last year or so) , in reality these pages get 10 to 50 uniqes per month.
    I’ll be happy to provide you some examples.

  7. Michael says

    Dating.com seems like something that would be hard to hit critical mass without a huge ad budget. It’s not easy to get someone to sign up for a dating service where there’s only 2 people in their area also on the site. Same problem as starting a forum, nobody will join until lots of other people have, so nobody joins. Whoever buys it should be prepared to spend 5x+ what they spent on the domain to market the site, not to mention high five, to low six, figures on development.

    But once you have some positive momentum going… watch out. With Sex.com, you can have all the traffic in the world, but if you can’t convert it to sales, what good is it? I’d rather have low traffic and high margins than high traffic and low (no) margins. You can always boost the traffic, but not much you can do to squeeze extra money out of a visitor that is used to getting things for free.

  8. Domo says

    Forgot:
    Dating .com is very on Target vs Sex .com , the traffic should be a lot easier to cater to …
    regardless of the amount of traffic,
    some ultra generic domains have the curse of ” ‘ambiguity” of such as links.com .

  9. FX says

    i have all the stats on dating.com, its not impressive.
    It also has a major google penalty on it. Domain is blocked by google, thus you cant put google ads on it or buy google traffic to this name. If you have a google feed, you can test it out yourself.

  10. FX says

    i would much rather have sex.com. a top google spot for “sex” would bring in around 50k uniques a day. a top spot for dating would bring in around 300-500 a day. Its a no brainier there. Online Personals is a weird vertical. Marketing wise its huge, organic search traffic its tiny. Its one of those verticals where you dont need a generic term or in reality dont want a generic term. A descriptive, intriguing site tittle / brand name would convert much better.

  11. Michael says

    Not sure where you’re getting those estimated traffic numbers FX, but they’re way off. Broad match, which is what you should look at for development, is 10x higher for Sex, not 100x higher. Even exact match it is only 30-50x higher depending on local (US English) or global. Again, I’d look at broad match, because Dating.com would likely rank for Online Dating, Asian Dating, Dating Sites, Dating Service, Christian Dating, etc. and capture traffic on much more than the exact match.

    So working with 10x less traffic from search, you’re really telling me that you’d make more on a porn site (where everyone expects free, and CPC is much lower) than you’d make on a developed dating site where memberships costs hundreds of dollars?

    I don’t see your Adsense argument as relevant because you’d have to be insane to drop a few mil on Dating.com and try to make it back with Adsense. The key here is development, if someone is buying this with parking in mind, you can expect their bidding to stop at mid $xxx,xxx. A buyer with a good development plan will pay seven figures on this easily.

    Sex.com might sell for more, but it won’t make as much money and thus to me, it is less valuable. It obviously couldn’t pay the bills on a $14M purchase price.

  14. Gazzip says

    I’d prefer sex please ! ….just call 1800gazzip 🙂

    The problem with domains of that quality is the price expectations have far exceded how much you could hope to make from them in a “reasonable” timeframe, if they made that much money so easily they would’nt be for sale at all. Type in traffic is only part of the equation ..not all of it.

    50Million for sex.com?, how many years would it take before the buyer actually saw any profit ?

    ….plenty long time I think

    I voted for sex.com being more valuable than dating.com

  15. Michael says

    FX, sorry, I didn’t realize you own Dating.com. I thought you were just quoting Compete or Alexa, which are known to be inaccurate. Google, however, knows how many searches they get, or so I’ve heard.

  17. Jim Holleran says

    Sex.com over dating.com. I think Sex.com could monetize some of that traffic into a dating site, similar to adult friend finder and be successful. I would not make Sex.com into porn.

    Little off topic, but if I had to pick 1 domain in the world it would be
    Games.com.

    Thanks, Jim

  18. Domo says

    I wished you asked which one is a better investment?

    dollar per dollar, in terms of potential ROI.

    In that case my answer will be dating.com

    How many prudes here would not own sex.com , not even for 1 Million USD?
    I wouldn’t , mainly due to the notoriety of the domain.

  19. Attila says

    Of course Sex.com is more valuable. Dating.com is just another dating website. One toooooo many dating sites out there (match, pof, friendfinder, tons more)

    If any of you had unlimited wealth, and I am talking hundreds of millions. I am almost pretty sure you would buy Sex.com for an insane amount.

    If I owned sex.com – I’d put a “survey” for a couple months asking “why they came there and what they were looking for (something specific besides just sex)” enter now for a chance to win 1,000 AMEX gift cards of $100 each. I’d also take the opinion of each user and offer the top 10 opinions $5k each.

    Take the results, analyze them and then build your website off what your end users were looking for.

    I’ve been thinking to do this survey for domains I own with traffic. Yet I haven’t a slightest clue why they’re there. It’d help me analyze what they went there looking for and monetize off it more easily.

  20. Rick Schwartz says

    I have been pretty hard on sex.com but I don’t think there is any comparison here. Dating.com is just not in the same league. Plus I have discovered the “ing” ending domains are not the most typed in as a rule. I own the misspell, Dateing.com so I know how much traffic that gets and if you know how to extrapolate the multiple between a misspell and the actual spelling you have a pretty good idea of traffic, income and value.

    I love the domain as a domain. It is first class. But I think most would be stunned by the numbers when compared to sex.com. Not even close.

  22. Chip Meade says

    Not even close. Sex.com pummels Dating.com Not even close. The debate is how many millions is Sex.com worth. Dating.com MIGHT reach 6 figures.

  23. Domo says

    Question for MHB:

    Knowing dating.com’ traffic (country of origin)

    Would you say Google Insights/Trends’ tool is:
    1)very accurate
    2)Semi accurate
    3)somewhat….
    4)not at all accurate?

    http://google .com/insights/search/#

    According to the tool sex.com traffic quality it’s let say “less than desirable”
    (Heck there is a couple of countries I never heard before…)

  27. sin says

    after all dating sites , people are looking for sex, if they looking for match, they obviously go to harmony etc.

    So I think people going to sex.com would be the same people going to dating.com however, sex.com number would be
    top high notch.

    I prefer Sex.com and I think it could be developed in to friendfinder like or dating site.

    If someone tell me to vote I would vote Sex.com , everyone loves Sex indeed.