Net Marketers Capitalize On Clinton Scandal

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January 26, 1998 (12:00 AM EST)

By John Borland,

What sells better than sex? Presidential sex scandals.

A few Net entrepreneurs are betting on it. The ink was barely dry on the headlines before a handful of quick-thinking business people had snapped up the scandal's most obvious names as domain names to use as gateways to their company's sites or as potentially profitable commodities in themselves.

Brett Robbins, a 31-year-old domain name reseller in Bloomington, Ind., said he decided to piggyback on the controversy while watching news of the scandal on CNN. "They kept on saying Lewinsky, Lewinsky, Lewinsky," he said. It took a few minutes for the idea to sink in, he added, but by the end of the night he was the proud owner of the rights to both Lewinsky.com and Impeachment.com.

The Lewinsky name has proved to be the most popular he's ever tried to sell. "I've already been getting offers for it," Robbins said. Domain brokerage DomainMart.com lists the name on its front page as a "historic special" for $5,000. "I'm confident that I'll have no problem getting $5,000 for it," Robbins said. "Most [names] aren't this popular. The reason I'm selling it is to recoup expenses I've had for other domain names."

Monicalewinsky.com also was snapped up the night the scandal broke. The address now points directly to the page of Chicago domain name registrar and Website host SiteLeader. Company officials could not be reached to determine whether they or one of their clients had registered the name.

Another Web design and registrar firm, the Hawaii-based MCS Internet Solutions, is pushing the limits of their servers with the new Lindatripp.com address. The company entered the game a few hours too late to grab the Lewinsky name, MCS co-owner Dan Stetser said, but still wanted to forge some connection to the controversy. "We wanted to show off how fast and how thoroughly we could set up the site," Stetser said. "We basically wanted to get involved in the story, give people a chance to sound off."

MCS's page features background on the story, a few unflattering photographs of the scandal's protagonists, and allows surfers to weigh in with their opinion on whether Tripp had done the right thing by taping Lewinsky's telephone conversations.

"We aren't really looking to make a buck off it, but we're getting our name out there," Stetser said. In the first two days of the site's operation, the page received 72,000 hits, he added, as well as considerable attention by major media outlets across the country. "Any PR is good PR, right?" Stetser added.

The domain Vernonjordan.com -- the name of the lawyer and Clinton confidante who allegedly pressured Monica Lewinsky to lie in her recent deposition -- is the biggest surprise of the bunch, unexpectedly pointing to a page dedicated to McDonald's-bashing. But while not directly related to the current Washington scandal, this page does have one tenuous link to Clinton and his travails.

The President is, after all, a huge fan of Big Macs.