In the domain name selling business, sex does sell!

By Peter Dinham
Tuesday, 16 June 2009 06:42

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It’s an old cliché, but the fact is that when you’re promoting and advertising a product or service, sex does sell! At least, that certainly seems to be the case in the year-old Australian domain name aftermarket where a world record price for a .AU domain is claimed to have been paid for the domain, SexToys.com.au.

According to Netfleet.com.au – who clearly reckon sex is a sure bet when it comes to promoting their own business – the SexToys.com.au domain name has just been sold on NetFleet for $25,500, a decent return on investment for the owner of the name who would have registered it for between $20 and $150.

The sale of domains has been legal in Australia for one year and, according to Netfleet, its “boom time” as the industry is now “coming into its own.”

Netfleet director, David Lye, claims other records were sold prior to the SexToys.com.au sale, with $13,500 paid a short time ago for the Mortgage.net.au domain, making it the largest ever sale of a .net.au domain name.

Claiming the company’s sales of .au domain names have been increasing steadily month on month, Lye says that in the first half of this month Netfleet  recorded sales totalling nearly $60,000.

Lye says that since the Australian domain name administrator, auDA, lifted the ban a year ago on buying and selling .AU domain names, Australian domain names have turned into highly valuable assets.

And, he reckons it’s not only sex that sells, and that previous record sales show that almost any industry has potentially “powerful and valuable domains.”