The Next Web

» Thar’s gold in them domain names! – The Next Web

   

Thar’s gold in them domain names!

Boris Written on 20th May 2008                                                                                                              20 COMMENTS some text
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten, Serial Internet Entrepreneur

I guess we all know that selling domain names can be pretty good business. But exactly how much money is in that business is anybody’s guess. To give you an impression of what your 4 letter, dictionary safe, erotic style domain name could be worth here is a list of the most expensive domain names ever sold:

Thars gold in them domain names!1. Sex.com: $12.5 million
2. Porn.com: $9.5 million
3. Diamond.com: $7.5 million
4. Business.com: $7.5 million
5. Casino.com: $5.5 million
6. Asseenontv.com: $5 million
7. Korea.com: $5 million
8. Wine.com: $3.3 million
9. Creditcheck.com: $3 million
Thars gold in them domain names!10. Vodka.com: $3 million

The interesting thing about this list is the amount of traffic they all generate as measured by Alexa. Sex.com is an obvious winner here but porn.com is only just getting started. And sex.com isn’t even a real site. It just redirects to another domain: sptc.information.com (Yeah, I checked so you don’t have to). If I would own such a great domain name I would use it for something more, well, to the point.

Another surprise is Asseenontv.com. Isn’t that a damn ugly and long domain name? I would guess that it would be a lot cheaper than the 5 million they got for that one.

Do you own any domains you don’t use which might be worth more than usual? Tell us in the comments!

About the author: Serial entrepreneur and founder of several companies. Current activities include TwitterCounter.com & this Blog. Boris is also very active on Twitter: @Boris

20 comments to “Thar’s gold in them domain names!”

  1. By Robin Wauters on May 21, 2008

    Well I edit virtualization.com (my business partner who owns the domain even has virtualiSation.com, which is how it’s spelled in some countries). Those should be worth something ;)

    Reply

  2. By Tjeerd Kramer on May 21, 2008

    Recently paid roughly $4k for a four letter .com, which happens to be my company name, http://www.wakr.com – not bad for a 4 letter .com I think.

    Reply

  3. By Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten on May 21, 2008

    we lots of domains but here are a few I like: betafy.com, blackberry.nu, entrepreneur.nl, feest.je, fingster.com, nameo.org, slurpr.com, taxati.com, weblogistan.com and virgle.com.

    Reply

  4. By Roald Cyberath on May 21, 2008

    I had registered a number of domains back in the 90’s (each time with a project idea behind it, not for speculation). I still have to find the time (or right partners) to do something with : eurobot.com , EuroDirectory.com , StreamCast.com , EuroTrust.com , SmartAd.com …
    Any buyers (or partners), contact me ! ;-)

    Reply

  5. By Xavier Damman on May 21, 2008

    Ah ah… I remembered two years ago, we were in the computer room of the uni and dns.be just announced the temporary free availability of .be domains. By that time I took about 30 of them but I did not renewed them since.
    There was 1euro.be,2euros.be, … I don’t even remember all of these.

    Otherwise, I have great twitter domains like:
    tweetyourlove.com
    tweetaboutit.com
    tweetaboutme.com

    and other tags related ones like
    tweetag.com
    magentag.com
    picktags.com

    oh, btw, my very first domain was ilsa.be (registered by usual letter sent to a Professor of the KUL, Leuven) it was back in the mid 90’s. And my first .com was lepetitcurieux.com in 1998.

    Reply

  6. By Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten on May 21, 2008

    @Roald: SmartAd.com is really cool. I’m sure you could get some money for that one…

    Reply

  7. By Roald Cyberath on May 21, 2008

    @Boris Sure, SmartAd.com must be very valuable… But I still have an idea on how to turn it into a player in the online advertising space… ;-) We’ll see.

    Reply

  8. By Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten on May 21, 2008

    @Roald: if you launch it we will blog about it… :-)

    Reply

  9. By Reinier Ladan on May 21, 2008

    I’ve got a few nice ones: golfbaan.com, interactiondesigner(s).nl, scrob(b)lr.com, openidea.info, bioscoop.biz and one porn related domain wich I won’t go into detail about :-)

    Reply

  10. By Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten on May 21, 2008

    @Reinier: just post it and tag it NSFW with commentag! :-)

    Reply

  11. By Reinier Ladan on May 21, 2008

    Alright than :-) fungercuffed.com (google ‘chasing amy + funger cuff’ for what it means)

    Reply

  12. By Reinier Ladan on May 21, 2008

    I meant fingercuffed.com of course :-) (fingers are cuffed right now, can’t type shit)

    Reply

  13. By Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten on May 21, 2008

    Ah, guess I asked for it. Here is the full explanation: http://www.urbandictionary.com.....nger+cuffs

    Reply

  14. By Vincent Nicolai on May 21, 2008

    i guess, pizza.com was sold for about 1.5 Million a while ago, which is quite an amount of money for such a domain :)

    cheers

    Vince

    Reply

  15. By Chris Desouza on May 21, 2008

    Buying and selling domain names is lucrative if you know how. And you certainly don’t have to be one among the big known boys to do it.

    Last year my projected sales amounted to over $200,000 by merely selling less than 50 odd names.

    http://www.chrisdesouza.com/affiliate/income.html

    The art is in learning what other successful domainers know. Then applying it.

    I am considering retiring by early next year. You can too!

    Chris

    Reply

  16. By Andrei Potorac on May 21, 2008

    I only bought two domains as I felt it’s time to work on my own start-ups, not on other people start-ups.

    Flevio.com and Blogvio.com No offers accepted, unless there are more than 5 zeros involved. :)

    Reply

  17. By raybeyondme on Jun 13, 2008

    i’ve got a few:
    curbsidetakeaway.com
    waybeyondme.com
    onsitetranquility.com
    icemaids.com
    evilretro.com
    churchofthefonz.com
    liquidlandscapers.com

    Reply

  18. By OXYLUS Stock Flash on Nov 29, 2008

    Flashtory.com would be one of many, problem is actually having the time to develop them all, not buying the domains :)

    Reply

  19. By E. Chute on Nov 30, 2008

    Hi,
    I’ve got a couple for sale:

    sunmaple.com
    9999finegold.com…..this one will be good when the price of gold takes off next year!
    superRFIDs.com…..next generation of RFID tags

    E-mail me your serious offers! echute88@hotmail.com

    Reply

  20. By Rich951 on Jan 12, 2009

    I’m looking for ways to personally sell some of my domains and sites without a broker. Any ideas how please? http://www.girlobsession.com may go first.

    Take care,
    Rich

    Reply

Post a Comment


Add your button here too.
Only €99 a week (100.000+ pageviews = less than € 1 CPM!)
Upload your button now.




Copyright 2006-2009 © TheNextWeb.com - Entries (RSS) / Comments (RSS)