domain names Archives - The Content Marketing Blog

These days, you can get a .com domain name for as little as $9.99. But if you’ve already registered a domain and a brand wants it, it can be worth millions.

One thing is for sure – big brands are willing to pay big bucks to snap up internet real estate if it suits their needs.

If you sell shoes, wouldn’t you want to get your hands on shoes.com, even if you’d just be using it to direct your visitors to your main website?

Of course you would and you’d probably also be willing to go to great lengths to make it yours.

So here are the top 10 most expensive domains ever sold:

1. Insure.com

Insure.com is the most expensive domain name ever sold, having been bought for $16M by Quin Street in 2009. “We have sold our Insure.com name and specified website content in a significant cash transaction that we think is in the best long-term interest of our shareholders,” said Robert Bland, CEO of Insure.com.

2. Sex.com

Sex.com is second on the list, having been sold in 2006 for $13M which saw it break into the Guinness Book of World Records in the High Price Paid for a Domain category. In October 2010 it sold again, this time for $14M.

3. Fund.com 2008

Fund.com was sold privately and at $9.9m it was the highest cash price sale ever reporter, having been paid for in an all-cash transaction.

And it wasn’t a one-off – writing at the time Ron Jackson of DN Journal said: “With the highest sale on record, another three sales in the six-figure range and 44 sales reaching at least five figures this was a pretty darn good week for domains.”

The fact the economy was supposedly on the skids at the time made the high volume of transactions even more impressive.

4. Porn.com 2007

The adult industry’s top domain name – porn.com – sold for $9.5M in 2007 to MXN Limited. Given the success of sex.com, it’s slightly surprising it didn’t go for even more.

5. Fb.com

Facebook bought Fb.com for $8.5M in November 2010 from the American Farm Bureau Federation, which is 42 times the amount the company originally paid for Facebook.com. “The Farm Bureau agreed to sell us fb.com and we in return have agreed not to sell farm subsidies,” Zuckerberg said in a post on techcrunch.com.

6. Business.com 1999

Another big sale was for business.com that was sold in 1999 for $7.5M. The domain was initially registered by two friends who wanted to use it to create their own B2B site. Then they sold it for 46 times what they originally paid. How’s that for a profit?

7. Diamond.com

If you’re selling jewellery online, diamond.com is one of the most desirable domain names, which is why it changed hands for $7.5M for back in 2006.

8. Beer.com

It’s understandable that Interbrew would want to own beer.com, which was originally used as a review site where people could go and rate their favourite beers. In 2004, Interbrew stepped in and bought it for $7 million. However, rumours are that Interbrew actually paid the beer.com owners in stock, rather than cash.

9. Israel.com

There’s no information on who actually bought Israel.com for $5.88 million in 2008. However, the seller, Joel Noel Friedman, became a celebrity when he revealed he decided to sell the domain to celebrate Israel’s 60th anniversary.

10. Casino.com

Casino.com is the 10th most expensive domain name ever sold and it’s now owned by a company in Gibraltar that paid $5.5 million for it in 2003.

So there you have it – ten domain names which netted their respective owners a fortune. Maybe yours could be next.
Guest post by Alex Gavril of 123-reg.co.uk, the UK’s largest domain name provider.

The domain name pool among .com, .net, and .org extensions is beginning to run dry. There are still websites for sale at Latonas and other brokerage companies, but finding unregistered domains is becoming difficult. These names are critical because they represent both the key name that pops up in a search engine result as well as the logical name to enter when looking for a particular subject or business via the HTML address of a web page. The resulting demand and limited supply has made website brokerage businesses profitable.

New Internet Real Estate

According to Forbes, in June 2012 the folks who regulate the Internet address system, ICANN, released its latest report on everyone who has applied for a new domain extension, essentially creating an entire new family of addresses within that ending.

The address application is not a simple endeavor, which is why the average small or medium business has never pursued it. Each domain extension application costs a $185,000 fee to apply, without even a guarantee of approval. Essentially, the big Fortune 500 players with millions of dollars to throw into marketing made up most of the applications.

The interesting aspect of the recently released report, however, was who applied. According to CNNMoney, big names like Apple, Google, and Amazon were all in the mix with the most applied titles. Over all, U.S. companies made up half of the total applications with a third going to Europe and the remainder in Asia.

Marketing Opportunity or Just Buzz?

So if the big players have all the new name addresses, then how is this a marketing opportunity for smaller players? Simple, those who work in particular industries have a great opening within which to establish a new piece of real estate associated with the major name that may dominate that industry. Just because a Fortune 500 company may own the title to .apple or .google doesn’t mean they will end up being the only ones to use that ending. In fact, each one of these big players operates a piece of their industry within which thousands of smaller businesses operate specifically.

For example, for all the business Apple does, there are thousands of app developers, repair businesses, accessory manufacturers, and independent software or hardware engineers who work on Apple related systems or equipment. They all represent independent businesses that work within the Apple “environment.” So grabbing a piece of .apple is a major opportunity for focused traffic that already wants Apple-related services or goods. It’s all in the name.

Additionally, many generic names are at stake as well. Potential addresses like .pizza or .docs are all included in the applications according to PCWorld.

Related: 18 HOT Online Marketing Tips

Availability Schedule

The new Internet websites for sale are not yet available and likely won’t be until 2013. So website brokerage dealers need to wait a bit. Each application made has to go through an ICANN review before it can be approved and made available. The first access involves a testing period to make sure it works with the rest of the Internet. Then, if passed, the new ending can be used as a domain address. Ultimately, how Internet users react to the new addresses will determine whether or not they are useful, but there is potential for small and big business alike, especially in the very crowded neighborhood that the Internet is right now.