According to figures released by ICANN tonight it looks like the .XXX registry had a renewal rate for its first year of over 80%
The ICANN transaction report for January for the .XXX extension show the registry having 113,773 domain names registered by the end of January 2013.
In the December report ICM Registry operator of the .XXX TLD filed with ICANN they reported 140,121 domain names registered at the end of December 2012, down from 142,953 at the end of November 2012.
The .XXX registry went live in December 2012, meaning that domains that were not renewed from the initial registrations would have expired and dropped in January.
So compared to December’s numbers the renewal rate for .XXX would be 81.1% with 27,239 domains not renewed but includes 576 newly registered domains, many of those newly registered domains were possibly domains that were not renewed by the original registrant.
Bottom line depending if you take the November numbers to compare to January 2013 registrations .XXX had a renewal rate of somewhere just under 80% but compared to December 2012 over 80%.
None of the numbers include the 80,000 domain names that were sold as 10 year registration blocks.
As .com domain names traditionally have renewed at the rate of 73%, .XXX did very well in renewals, which we anticipated.
Stuart Lawley CEO of ICM said back in December that .XXX renewal rates where “exactly in line, or in many cases, ahead of those enjoyed by other registries”
Now after the agreement between ICM and Manwin .the real challenge will start when the new TLDs launch, then all what matters will be one thing only ; PRICE (Registration Fee)
And that sums up the demand to be a registry for these new non.com’s – selling / renewing domains that never get used.
But I will say that .xxx does have sex appeal – likely more of those will actually get used.
NiceNIC started a thread at DP entitled: Will you register .XXX domains if price goes down to 9?