XXX domain name makes a porn fortune

The British net tycoon behind the porn exclusive ".xxx" domain has made another fortune, as demand for places on the new home for adult content is expected to bring in $200 million this year.

Stuart Lawley's ICM company has sold just short of 230,000 ".xxx" URLs, according to official data from the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).

Some of these, like fetish.xxx and shemales.xxx, go for a premium ($300,000 and $200,000 respectively) but less sought after names can sell for a minimum annual fee of $62.

Beyond the bottom-line, ".xxx"'s impact on the Web has been huge. 20 million porn sites are now housed within its bounds, and part of ICM's mission, says Lawley, is to clean up the experience of watching porn (if not the content).

Each page goes through a daily virus-check, and the pornosphere's "increase your girth" type spam has been reined in.

Whether Lawley's success will boost the suffering porn industry remains to be seen - global porn revenue halved between 2007 to 2011.