We’ve all become so accustomed to web domains in such a manner that we don’t even register them anymore, but one must pay quite a bit of money to own one, and some may even make it up the list of the most expensive domain names ever sold.
Domain names aren’t created randomly; they are created by rules and procedures of the Domain Name System, also known as DNS. These are used by site owners to represent their business or a service they offer or something they are interested in.
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Each site replaces a numerical combination that no one would be able to remember, at least not with the amount of sites we all visit every day. Domain names are organized in several levels of the DNS root. For instance, at the top of the list are top-level domains, which also include generic top-level domains such as .com, .net, .org and so on, as well as the country code top-level domains, which are the country-specific endings you see on various websites.
Then, there are the second and third-level domain names that are open for reservation, which is done via various domain registrars who intermediate all such actions.
Some website names are sold as such, with the domain alone, no background. Others are sold with a plethora of information, a user database; basically an entire business. For the sake of our list today we only took into consideration the domain-only sales and not those that also included web businesses since those are fully-operating companies that hold more than just a name. For instance, Insurance.com was sold for $35.6 million, but there’s an entire business behind it while LasVegas.com was sold for $90 million, although that’s at the end of a payment plan that’s going to be over in 2040.
For our list, we looked over several resources, including DN Journal and European Domain Centre. Most of these domains were bought years ago and sold when the price was right. After you finish reading this article, don’t forget to check the most visited websites in the world, too. Without further ado, here are the 12 most expensive domain names ever sold.
12. IG.com
Price – $4.7 million
IG.com used to be owned by iG, Brazil’s third-largest search portal, which has switched to a different primary domain. The buyer was IG Group, a British online betting firm that’s one of the world’s leaders in online trading. The deal was brokered by Escrow.com and it was one of the most expensive sales of 2013.
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11. Medicare.com
Price – $4.8 million
Sold in spring 2014, Medicare.com was bought by eHealthInsurance, for $4.5 million in cash and $300,000 in debt. This will certainly help eHealth in broadening its dominance in this area. Nowadays, the site helps users find answers to their questions about the Medicare plan options, including some nearby depending on their Zip codes. The site features options to compare plans and verify licensed insurance agents.
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10. Clothes.com
Price – $4.9 million
Clothes.com was bought in 2008 by Zappos for $4.9 million, a company that was purchased by Amazon in the same year in a deal that was worth some $1.2 billion, which, considering how deep Amazon’s pockets go, is quite a price, but not a bank breaker. The original owner, IdeaLab, sold the domain name which is recognized as an intangible asset with a “useful life of 20 years” as the SEC records at the time reveal. Nowadays, typing in clothes.com will take you to Zappos.com where you can shop for shoes, clothes, bags, accessories and so on.
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9. Toys.com
Price – $5.1 million
The sale of this particular domain is a bit of a saga. In fact, the site name was originally sold for $1.25 million as the owner tried to settle its bankruptcy issues. Then, just a few days later, it was put up for auction as it happens most often than not.
Toys R Us hurried to get its claws on the domain since, well, it makes sense given their company’s name. What happened was that the domain was bought for over $5 million and turned into a midway site. Typing in Toys.com redirects you to ToysRUs.com, making for an effective solution for those that apparently don’t know what their go-to place for toys is, or what the buyer company wants you to believe it is.
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8. Slots.com
Price – $5.5 million
As you’d expect, this has been registered for years and years, more specifically since 1995 and it was used for exactly what you predict it would – a gambling portal. The domain was listed for sale in an auction which ended up closing without a bid reaching the reserve. Afterwards, however, a deal was reached by the two parties with the help of Moniker, an Oversee company.
The buyer was BodogBrand, a venture capital and licensing organization. The company’s founder said he took on the bid mostly because he finds Slots.com to be the second best gaming domain in the world, following Casino.com alone. Mainly, he wanted to use the domain to generate traffic to his own branded properties, as well as other websites, as TechCrunch reported at the time.
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7. Z.com
Price – $6,784,000
Single letter domain names aren’t exactly all that common, even nowadays. In 2014, Z.com was bought by GMO Internet, Inc., one of Japan’s largest Internet service providers, and the operator of the largest domain registrar in the country. It paid the equivalent of $6,784,000 a couple of years ago to get its hands on the marketing opportunity that sits with Z.com, which is incredibly memorable.
Maybe it will surprise you, maybe it won’t, but the original owner of the domain name and the original registrant was Nissan Motors, but it wasn’t doing much before it was bought off, much like it’s doing nowadays.
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6. Diamond.com
Price – $7.5 million
This is one of the most expensive domain swaps of all times, and it was completed back in 2006. Then, Odimo.com sold the domain over to Ice.com, an online jewelry retailer.
In 2015, the domain came back up on the market, this time in a deal that’s being handled by GoDaddy.”If you consider that in nine years, the market has gone up, we hope for a better number than [the previous sale],” GoDaddy’s senior director Paul Nicks told TheDomains.
They were looking into finding people in the industry and outside it since the domain offers so much versatility, considering that it can be used for more than just jewelry sales, including for things like credit cards and so on.
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5. Porno.com
Price – $8,888,888
Well, it was bound for us to hit the sex-related domains, right? The domain was owned by Rick Schwartz, the so-called “Domain King,” who owned over 3,000 domains by 1999. Porno.com was bought with $42,000 in 1997 and sold off for $8,888,888 while making plenty of money in the meantime, more specifically over $10 million in parking and redirects, without providing any adult content. If this wasn’t a great investment, I don’t know what is.
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4. Porn.com
Price – $9.5 million
One letter less, a few hundred thousand dollars more, Porn.com was sold to MXN Limited with the help of Moniker.com. The exact details of the sale haven’t been released, but the claims indicate that this was an all-cash transaction. Officials believed this would be a valuable asset for MXN Limited because it has a high number of daily visitors, troves of traffic and it’s one of the top domains in the adult industry.
Nowadays, Alexa.com, the online analytics tool ranks Porn.com as the 1.077th most visited site at a global level.
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3. Fund.com
Price – $9,999,950
When news of this sale came through many didn’t believe it to be real. It was, at the time, the highest price ever paid for a domain name, which obviously raised a few eyebrows. But, the news was confirmed, both through a press release, and a SEC report indicating the transaction was reported to the US government. Nowadays, the site is not even active anymore.
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2. Sex.com
Price – $13 million
Recognized by the Guinness Book of World Records as the highest domain-only sale in history, Sex.com was sold off for $13 million. The original owner, Escom LLC was going bankrupt, so it decided to sell the asset to Clover Holdings Ltd, which was the successful bidder for the domain name. The entire deal was brokered by Sedo.com, a domain name marketplace.
Nowadays, Sex.com is ranked 768th among the world’s most visited websites.
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1. 360.com
Price – $17 million
The number one spot among the most expensive domain names ever sold goes to 360.com, previously owned by Vodafone. The buyer is Chinese company Qihoo, who now uses the 360.com domain as a redirect spot for haosou.com, its primary search engine. Market estimates indicate that the purchased domain might end up being the main site for the Chinese company as it starts to centralize its activity domains.
Other big domain names have been sold too, but they came prepacked with businesses. Insurance.com, for instance, was sold for $35.6 million, while VacationRentals.com went for $35 million. PrivateJet.com was sold for $30.2 million and Internet.com for $18 million. These, however, aren’t just about the domain names, which clearly puts 360.com at the top of the list of the 12 most expensive domain names ever sold.
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