There was a period a few years ago when many of those with more than a passing interest in the earning potential of the internet realised that desirable domain names are prospectively very valuable. In their thousands fledgling online entrepreneurs would buy up domain names that they perceived to be of high worth. Needless to say, many of these investments lead nowhere and once the registration expired they returned to the realm of unused monikers. There were however a few amongst this army of digital Delboy’s that made incredible returns on this practice, through good fortune, foresight or most commonly: by getting there first.

One of the most fortuitous of these name-investors was the initial purchaser of sex.com which sold for the incredible sum of $14million in 2007. Strangely, this domain currently displays just a hosting page which could well serve to generate affiliate referral income or just serve as a signifier that the purchaser expects to sell it on again for an even greater figure in the future. Despite a minor downturn in average domain prices in the US, the market has maintained a stability inconsistent with most industries in the face of the recession: as such it isn’t wholly unrealistic to assume that sex.com could well resell for a higher figure in the future.

The recent sale of the toys.com domain to retail giant ToysRUs for the incredible figure of $5.1million earlier this month demonstrates that there is still a lot of faith and capital tied up in high desirability URLs. A major factor in the high value ascribed to domains like this is the SEO implication: having a massively competitive keyword such as ‘sex’ or ‘toys’ as a domain name provides a huge boost in search engine rankings for these terms, which in turn can be converted into increased sales.

So aside from demonstrating the continued high value of a memorable brand and easily recognised domain name, what does this prove? Well for a start that sex does indeed sell and that toys sells too. As such, could we be on the verge of witnessing a huge upturn in the popularity of sex toys? Well, anything is possible: it’ll be easier to make a judgement if the domain sextoys.com goes up for sale- although it must be said that it’s rather unlikely that it will fetch anywhere near the same sum as either ‘sex’ or ‘toys’ as standalone URLs.