Adult domains have been around since time immemorial. Fine, I’m exaggerating. It’s been around only since the ‘public’ (non-military) internet was born. In fact, adult domaining is popular and it predates, by many years, general domaining. Adult domaining has always been pervasive, and it brought in the cash in great wads.

Well, let’s just say adult domaining is not illegal – or, at least, I haven’t seen or heard anything to suggest it is illegal. In fact, it is a legitimate niche in the domaining industry; legitimacy, after all, can be based on tradition and long practice, and adult domaining is a well-established domaining sector. Online pornography – which adult domaining generally go hand in hand with – is generally frowned upon but tolerated. What constitutes pornography also varies from place to place. Adult domains that go with adult dating sites, however, have greater acceptance.

Adult domaining, moreover, is largely unregulated and non-formalized. Adult domains are treated similarly to other types of domains under ICANN rules. Adult domainers abide by the rules of the operators (domain registry) that administer to their domain extension – sex.com has to comply with Verisign Global Registry Services’ rules whereas sex.biz has to follow NeuStar Inc.

Speaking of domain extensions, do you think ICANN should approve a distinct top-level domain for sexually explicit content?

The .xxx extension is a pretty intuitive domain extension for adult content sites. Right now, this domain extension can be procured through the New.net registrar. New.net is not an ICANN-accredited registrar. The .xxx domains, moreover, are also unofficial and can be accessed only through New.net’s alternative DNS root. Sites using a domain with a dot triple extension are also not readily available to everyone; special client software or adding New.net to the URL is required.

Some believe that a distinct TLD for adult sites is a great option, especially for parents who can simply block .xxx domains from loading instead of relying on content-filtering parental controls. However, there are also concerns that giving adult domains the .xxx extension will create a bad image for the adult domaining in general.

ICANN is dragging its feet on the issue. So far, the proposal to use the .xxx top-level domain extension has been presented to ICANN three times, and in all cases, it failed to get approval.

The word is out. Check the internet forums and you’ll see people complaining that their PPC earnings are going down. How true is this?

According to a small survey, more than half of the publishers surveyed complained that their Pay-per-Click revenues have gone down in recent months. Upon further investigation, this downturn in Pay-per-Click profits can be traced to several factors.

One of the most important of these factors is the relatively new Google “smart pricing” scheme for its PPC program. The smart pricing system basically takes into account the publisher’s conversion rate, the other ads in the page, the ad quality, the time factor for the ad campaign and a host of other factors. These are then integrated into the revenue amount calculated for the click through.

In other words, the better the web page is in converting readers into customers or the better it is in convincing customers to sign up for newsletters, to register online, etc. – the better tat page is in Google’s books and the better the pricing scheme this page will get.

This payment scheme ensures better content for users and better conversion rates for advertisers. However, this means that domainers who have turned their domains into made-for-AdSense sites will find their PPC revenues going down – unless they are able to improve their sites’ conversion rates. Of course this means they have to spend more time and money on web development, especially on high-quality and unique content.

The current economic and currency crisis is also playing havoc on the performance of PPC sites. For one, a weaker dollar means lower earnings for those who use a different currency and therefore rely on the dollar’s strength and their local currency’s relative weakness to earn a significant amount of money after currency conversion. For those who do use the dollar, a weaker dollar also means diminished buying power. Publishers who rely on offshore content providers may have to pay more than they had to before the crisis. The fact that most advertisers are taking the cautious approach– choosing to keep their money to maintain liquidity instead of investing it on PPC advertising – means even lower PPC earnings.

Nevertheless, PPC has fared better than other advertising media even with the crisis.