A Brief History of 'sex.com'

linuxwrangler writes "Violet Blue's current 'Open Source Sex' column in SFGate covers the amusingly sordid history of sex.com. More graft and corruption than hanky-panky, the article details some of the exploits surrounding the much-desired URL, including an attempted assassination, drug smuggling, money laundering, and a bid to buy out Ceasar's Palace. From the article: 'It's estimated that Cohen made over $100 million off the URL in the years he had it, even making a 1999 bid to buy Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, and was only forced to give it back to Kremen when a San Jose court awarded the URL (and $65 million in damages) to Kremen in 2001. It had been a five-year struggle for Kremen, both in battling his speed addiction and in trying to raise funds for his own litigation. Even though his dot-com boom resume boasted typical startup-style impressive credentials, Kremen was only able to afford the court bills when bitter Sex.com porn industry rivals helped fund the case.'

Social engineering

[Life700MB]

Ah, score another for the good old social engineering [wikipedia.org] that made it posible to obtain the domain without having the rigts to it.

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Re:just make sure...

[Anonymous Coward]

In Dutch, 'naaien' (to sew) is a common euphemism for sex

Money

[Lord_Dweomer]

Just out of curiosity, how is it that he made that much freaking money off of a domain name? I'm sure he had ads and affiliate stuff all over the place but how in the hell did he make THAT much, it seems WAAAY more than he should have been able to make.

Can any adult webmasters weigh in on the amounts of money to be made in your business? How much would you say your "average" pr0n site pulls in? What amount of traffic is required for that?

Re:Money

[Anonymous Coward]

Can any adult webmasters weigh in on the amounts of money to be made in your business? How much would you say your "average" pr0n site pulls in?

I can't tell you as an adult webmaster, but as somebody who used to work for a company that was involved in the payment processing for some adult websites I can tell you that even relatively obscure sites, without a domain such as sex.com pull in a metric shitload of cash. It is the niche ones that do well, once had a conversation with a guy who was working minimum wage until his wife agreed to pose for some very specific kind of photos... they are looking to retire wealthy in a few years time (when he turns 40).

Re:Money

[owlnation]

It was easier to make lots of money in porn at the beginning of the web. For those of us who entered the marker later it's actually pretty tough, you need to do all the work that every other site is doing, adult or otherwise, to make money. And no, not even in that order of magnitude amount - if you are doing things legitimately an least - as I endeavor to do. Maybe if you are doing things illegally you can make much more, but that's not for me, I'd rather settle for a reasonable income and be able to sleep at night.

I have few friends who did start up at the beginning of the web, and sure they are pretty rich, but they didn't make anything like that kind of money. Either this guy is really good, or (likely) there's still more to the story to be told.

Re:Money

[Anonymous Coward]

Top affiliate schemes these days pay $40-$60 per signup for a $3 trial. These convert at around 1:1000 for properly niched/setup sites.
For some actual figures from legit guys - http://www.hoes.com/sponsors/ [hoes.com]
This shows that traffic to the standard top programs will run at about 5c/hit today, which is about right. In 2004 it was more like 10c a hit. The market is flooded these days. Back in the sex.com battle days it was even more.

sex.com falls in the top 1000 traffic sites overall, which you can imagine the number of hits we are talking there. Subtract a decent chunk of conversion ratio for the weaker traffic (sex.com visitors are not going to be as determined porn surfers as hoes.com, a lot more casual hits), and you are still probably talking 1c a hit. For, lets say, 6m hits a day, $60,000 a day == 21 million a year. Sounds in the right ballpark?