information 5 Single Letter Domains and How They’re Used

Short domain names tend to have a high value attached to them, mainly due to their rarity. Two-letter .COM’s for example, have seen exponential growth that has made seven-figure sales an almost regular occurrence.

One category of domain names that is even more exclusive is one-letter domain names. There have been many examples of single character sales in new domain extensions, but one-letter .COM’s and .NET’s remain scarce thanks to the reservation of all but five domain names.

Below, we profile the five single-letter .COM and .NET domain names that are available to see how they are being used right now.


Q.com

The first name is owned by Qwest Communications, who were acquired by CenturyLink in 2010 in a stock-for-stock deal that was worth $12 billion. The acquisition of Qwest meant that rights to the Q.com domain name were transferred over to CenturyLink. Since 2010, Q.com has been forwarded to CenturyLink.com. Unsurprisingly, the domain receives many visitors each month and has a worldwide Alexa ranking of just over 40,000, with a US ranking of around 7,000.

Since CenturyLink is a company with assets totalling $47 billion, it’s highly unlikely that the name will ever leave their possession. However, if the domain was put up for sale, there would be many interested parties including Qualcomm, Quintiles, and Tencent’s QQ network that uses the domain QQ.com.

Z.com

For many years, Z.com was owned by Japanese automotive giant Nissan, who used the name since the early 2000’s to promote their Z series sports cars. That was until 2014 when the first ever one-letter .COM domain sale was publicly recorded. GMO Internet, one of Japan’s largest ISP operators, bought the domain name for 800 million Japanese Yen, which equated to $6,784,000 at the time of the sale.

Today, the domain name is used as a global forex trading platform. According to the website, the z.com service currently has over 450,000 users and makes up an incredible 20% of the global forex market share. The domain name has a global Alexa rank of just over 46,000, with the service apparently most popular in Vietnam, where the domain has an Alexa ranking of under 900.

This is the only one-letter .com domain name that we have sales data for, and it is the only one that is fully developed.


X.com

X.com has had an illustrious history but lays dormant as of writing. The name was originally registered by a company called Weinstein & DePaolis and was the homepage of a Netscape employee called Robert Walker for some time during the 90’s.

That is until 1999 when current Tesla CEO Elon Musk acquired the domain name for an online financial services platform. After the company merged with Confinity in 2000, the X.com brand was scrapped as the company focused on their new service, PayPal.

PayPal was acquired by eBay in 2002 for $1.5 billion, of which Elon Musk received $165 million. X.com has been used in many guises by PayPal since then, but the domain doesn’t resolve as of writing. Should PayPal ever look to sell the domain name, there would be many companies lining up to bid on the name.

Google’s Moonshot Factory is currently branded as “X” and uses the domain x.company. Another possibility for the domain would be for PayPal to reunite Elon Musk with X.com for his SpaceX project, currently using spacex.com.


Q.net

The first of our single-letter .NET domains is Q.net. This name was owned by Bradley Allen of Q Networks until 2016 when the domain name was sold. The sale was handled by domain brokerage firm Media options, with the buyer revealed as Mike Gleissner, a domain name investor with a vast portfolio of short domain names. Q.net was on sale with a buy-now price of $1.2 million, but the final sales price has never been publicly revealed.

As with the majority of Mr Gleissner’s portfolio, the domain displays a coming soon page for a generic social media service.


I.net

There are only two single-letter .NET domain names in existence and they are both in the hands of domain name investors. In this case, I.net is under the ownership of Future Media Architects, a company that owns an incredible portfolio of over 100,000 domain names including FM.com, media.com and oxide.com. I.net was originally used by Future Media Architect’s owner Thunayan Al-Ghanim as an ICANN approved internet registry, but now the name isn't active.

 

[DOMAIN ILLUMINATI]

Thanks, great insight.
1 character is the minimum, 63 characters is the maximum.
While the maximum includes always the minimum, the minimum can never include the maximum.

 

[lambo.com]

Thanks, great insight.
1 character is the minimum, 63 characters is the maximum.
While the maximum includes always the minimum, the minimum can never include the maximum.

Oh no, not this nonsense again!

 

[Dave]

Thanks, great insight.
1 character is the minimum, 63 characters is the maximum.
While the maximum includes always the minimum, the minimum can never include the maximum.

May I have some of what you're smoking please? I want to join your happy place.

 

[domain-name]

so those 1 character domain, dont really popular as they should be?

the most popular i think its no_url_shorteners, if .co is counted

 

[Hootsifer]

They haven't been developed much but that one sold and developed went for $6,784,000 ......hardly underperforming...

 

[Mr. Deleted]

x .co is a Godaddy shortener. Not sure if they would be interested, but x.com could also be added to that service if Paypal would want to sell it.

 

[1Darko]

@James Iles Thank you for this info!

 

[DOMAIN ILLUMINATI]

Thanks, great insight.
1 character is the minimum, 63 characters is the maximum.
While the maximum includes always the minimum, the minimum can never include the maximum.

Oh no, not this nonsense again!

63 blocks includes 63 times 1 block.
But 1 block does / can not include 63 blocks.

The same rule is valid for characters in a domain.
So this is no nonsense.

 

[DOMAIN ILLUMINATI]

May I have some of what you're smoking please? I want to join your happy place.

Of course, just 'smoke' (breath) clean, fresh air - I recommend some from the alps.
That's what I do and thats why I can reckon (see comment above).

Abstracted image from the alps.

 

[lambo.com]

Show attachment 59924

63 blocks includes 63 times 1 block.
But 1 block does / can not include 63 blocks.

The same rule is valid for characters in a domain.
So this is no nonsense.

Ok, well 63 is also 36 backwards and 3+6=9 but wait, 6+3 also equals 9. And 3 goes into 6 and 9.

Mind blowing stuff, you should add that to your MOJO.

 

[DOMAIN ILLUMINATI]

Ok, well 63 is also 36 backwards and 3+6=9 but wait, 6+3 also equals 9. And 3 goes into 6 and 9.

Mind blowing stuff, you should add that to your MOJO.

I don't believe in MOJOs.
But in the big mystic of mathematics.
It's indeed mindblowwwing.

63 is divisible without a rest by 1/63, 3/21, 7/9, 9/7, 21/3, 63/1
60 is divisible without a rest by 1/60, 2/30, 3/20, 4/15, 5/12, 6/10, 10/6, 12/5, 15/4, 20/3, 30/2, 60/1

If we add 63 and 60 we get 123.
If we add 1 + 2 + 3 we get 6.
If we flip it, we get 9.
If we split 63 we get 6 and 3.
If we add 6 and 3 we got 9 again.
9 is the highest digit.

 

[Kate]

x.org

 

[Mr. Deleted]

x.org

They have been selling off the one-letter.org names for a while now, but x.org is not one of them, as it is the legacy name in the .org namespace. Zerocancer.org has z.org and C.org is going to Change.org for example. I wonder what their asking price is, and what you would have to do to get your hands on one of them.

 

[Dave]

TheKingOfTop.com is available to register!

 

[DOMAIN ILLUMINATI]

TheKingOfTop.com is available to register!

Just another .com domain, so what.
But kingof.top is registered!

 

[briguy]

Can understand why those letters are "reserved" but "I.net" ?

 

[mpls]

Thanks for article.
But it is really crazy own a 1 letter .com (z.com) and redirect to trade.z.com !!!!!!!

 

[Mr. Deleted]

Can understand why those letters are "reserved" but "I.net" ?

i.net = internet. For a further review of this, check out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-letter_second-level_domain

It does appear that they removed most of the Project94 content I had added there. I guess they did not like my improvements.

 

[Mr. Deleted]

Thanks for article.
But it is really crazy own a 1 letter .com (z.com) and redirect to trade.z.com !!!!!!!

They actually have a few sub domain names on the home page, but what I find interesting about the home page, they try to associate the color red with "friendly", but in college, I was told that red was more of an aggressive color. That is why Facebook and some others use blue for a more relaxed color.

Here is an article about it https://www.helpscout.net/blog/psychology-of-color/

But the truth is that color is too dependent on personal experiences to be universally translated to specific feelings. There are, however, broader messaging patterns to be found in color perceptions.

In a study titled “Impact of color on marketing,” researchers found that up to 90% of snap judgments made about products can be based on color alone, depending on the product. Regarding the role that color plays in branding, results from another study show that the relationship between brands and color hinges on the perceived appropriateness of the color being used for the particular brand (does the color “fit” what is being sold?).

 

[briguy]

i.net = internet. For a further review of this, check out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-letter_second-level_domain

Makes sense..wouldn't have figured it was that simple of a explanation. Just looked at "I" as a premium letter.

Thanks for your time and the "color/colour" link.. I sometime use a red background (maybe don't color/colour) on a "call to action" button (Buy Now /etc) especially on a blue background or font

 

[Mr. Deleted]

Makes sense..wouldn't have figured it was that simple of a explanation. Just looked at "I" as a premium letter.

They reserved all domains, I forgot the year, but as they all started to expire, as the owners did not want to pay 100 a year for them, they were taken off the market. A few were renewed, like the 5 mentioned on this thread. The owner of i.net is a member here actually. He owns a nice portfolio from FM.com, FMA.com and even owns the cool domain name "COOL.com!"

Thanks for your time and the "color/colour" link.. I sometime use a red background (maybe don't color/colour) on a "call to action" button (Buy Now /etc) especially on a blue background or font

I have experimented with the cookbook I published, and for some reason, blue is the best seller. You could do some split testing on colors and see what works best on your call to action pages.

 

[DOMAIN ILLUMINATI]

I like this 'infographic', colors are definitely 'messages'.
That's why .top is red.

 

[Mr. Deleted]

I'm not really a fan of red in marketing. I like softer colors unless it is for politics etc.

 

[DOMAIN ILLUMINATI]

I'm not really a fan of red in marketing. I like softer colors unless it is for politics etc.

'Like a UHD XK screen', I am a fan of every color in the right place (context).
I am also a fan of 1 character if it repeats 62 times (results in 63 1 characters).