Thar’s gold in them domain names!
Written on May 20, 2008 – 10:09 pm
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:
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
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!
I hope you like that post!
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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 ;)
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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.
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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.
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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 ! ;-)
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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.
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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…
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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.
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By Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten on May 21, 2008
@Roald: if you launch it we will blog about it… :-)
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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 :-)
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By Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten on May 21, 2008
@Reinier: just post it and tag it NSFW with commentag! :-)
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By Reinier Ladan on May 21, 2008
Alright than :-) fungercuffed.com (google ‘chasing amy + funger cuff’ for what it means)
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By Reinier Ladan on May 21, 2008
I meant fingercuffed.com of course :-) (fingers are cuffed right now, can’t type shit)
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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
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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
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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
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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. :)
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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
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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 :)
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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
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