LOS ANGELES — ICM Registry reported Wednesday that it has sold more than 12,000 .XXX domain names after offering a discount promotion earlier this month.
The promotion, which slashed the cost of .XXX domain names to about $15 on a retail level, has just three days left. The promotion, which began earlier this month as part of a legal settlement with adult entertainment giant Manwin, will end Friday at 4 p.m. PDT (midnight UTC time).
ICM Registry CEO Stuart Lawley told XBIZ that most of those who have taken advantage of the discount, which likely will be repeated in future years, locked in their .XXX domain names for an average of two years.
So far, after about 18 months since its roll out, ICM Registry reports 205,794 .XXX domain names in the system. Defensive blocks account for about 85,000 .XXX names, leaving 120,000 recurring names.
ICM Registry is making significant moves to protect .XXX participants with its recent applications to operate three additional adult entertainment-related TLDs — .sex, .porn and .adult — Lawley said.
If awarded these new TLDs, ICM Registry will offer a “grandfathering” clause and will automatically reserve matching names at no additional cost to those who already have .XXX domains.
.XXX registrants can chose to do nothing and the matching names will never be released under the new TLD suffixes, Lawley said.
Lawley noted that the last industry conference, XBIZ Summit in Miami held earlier this month, yielded new-found revenue.
"We did some good business there and sold many names including some nice premiums," he said.