If you visit DNJournal, you’ll notice that there is a section called “YTD Sales Charts”, which lists the highest sales of the year to date. There’s also a fantastic archive of domain sales dating back to 2004, and is one of the most comprehensive and complete archives of the domain industry as a whole.
Every so often, DNJournal publishes a domain sale priced at $1 million or more. In this mini series, we’ve taken a look back at all the domain names that DNJournal has listed as selling for over $1 million from 2004 to 2016, to see what they’re currently used for.
Part one is Sex.com through to Candy.com. For your own reference, we shall include a table showing each domain name with their sales price, and the year the name was sold at the bottom of each article in the series.
Sex.com - $13 million - 2010
One of the most famous domain names of all time, with a checkered history. A book was also written about the domain and the legal action that surrounded the name. As you would expect, the website the domain is hosting now is definitely NSFW, but it seems to still be a popular destination with a global Alexa ranking of 945.
Fund.com - $9,999,950 - 2008
In March 2008, a company called Clek Media announced they had brokered the sale of Fund.com to the company Fund.com, Inc. The business surrounding the domain name thrived until 2011, when according to Wikipedia, Fund.com lost 99% of its value. Currently the domain is being offered for sale by Igloo.com
Porn.com - $9.5 million - 2007
Another NSFW domain name is the $9.5 million Porn.com. This domain, with a global Alexa ranking of 725, was sold in 2007, but could have been sold again in 2013. According to DomainHistory.net, the name transferred from Moniker to Fabulous.com under privacy at some point in 2013. This could have just been a registrar change, or it could have been sold.
Porno.com - $8,888,888 - 2015
Three of the top four largest domain sales of all time are from the adult industry. This sale is from Rick Schwartz (@Rick Schwartz), and was first announced on TheDomains.com in 2015. Rick originally bought the name for $42,000 from a college student who bought the name for $5,000 a week before. Since then, Rick has apparently earned well in excess of $10 million from ads and redirects on the domain.
We.com - $8 million - 2015
This sale was first announced by NamePros in 2015. At the time, the domain’s new owner wasn’t known. It was confirmed that the new owner was from China, and we speculated that the domain could have been bought by Tencent - owners of the popular WeChat application. Since then, the name has become the new home of Wealth Evolution, a peer to peer (P2P) loan company based in Beijing.
Diamond.com - $7.5 million - 2006
Online jewellery retailer Ice.com bought the diamond.com domain name from Odimo Inc in 2006, and was used to to host a site educating visitors about diamonds, as well as offering diamond jewellery for sale.
According to TheDomains.com, Diamond.com was being offered for sale by GoDaddy in 2015. The domain currently doesn’t host a site, but looks to still be owned by the original buyer.
Z.com - $6,784,000 - 2014
A very rare one-letter .COM was sold by Nissan Motors to GMO Internet, one of Japan’s largest ISP operator. Z.com is one of just three one-letter .COM domains available, with the other two being Q.com and X.com. Currently, Z.com hosts a forex and commodities trading website, and is still owned by GMO Internet.
Slots.com - $5.5 million - 2010
Slots.com was purchased by Canadian billionaire Calvin Ayre, owner of Bodog; an entertainment brand that offers online gambling and sports betting. Currently the domain hosts a fairly basic website that links to gaming websites, along with a lot of text about online casinos and slots games.
Toys.com - $5.1 million - 2009
Sold in 2009 in a bankruptcy auction, Toys.com was bought by Toys R Us, outbidding National A-1 Advertising. The company then set up a website on the domain name, but 2015, the domain started forwarding to the Toys R Us main website.
Clothes.com - $4.9 million - 2008
In May 2008, Zappos bought the domain name Clothes.com for $4.9 million from IdeaLab. The purchase was brought to light after the company was acquired by Amazon in an all-stock deal worth $1.2 billion. As of writing, Clothes.com is still owned by the Zappos brand, but the website doesn’t resolve.
IG.com - $4.7 million - 2013
IG Group of London, England invested $4.7 million into buying this two-letter .COM domain. The sale was brokered by Tessa Holcomb of Igloo.com and Marcus Kocak, former Director of Domain Acquisitions at NetNames. IG.com was in use by iG, a Brazilian company before being sold. Around the same time, IG Group acquired IG.co.uk and IG.de. IG.com is now used to host IG Group’s popular trading platform.
HG.com - $3,770,000 - 2016
Announced very recently was the sale of HG.com. The news was first broken by DN.com’s blog, dnqueen.net. According to them, the domain was bought by a company called WanJiaHuanGou, and the name is currently forwarding to their existing website, wjhgw.com. The company that now owns HG.com also owns several other domain names including 65.com, 068.com and 682.com.
Mi.com - $3.6 million - 2014
Another two-letter .COM was sold in 2014, again with a multi million dollar price tag. This was acquired by Xiaomi, a Chinese based smartphone maker, which had revenues of $20 billion in 2015.
At the time, co-founder of Xiaomi, Li Wanqiang, said: “The new domain is simpler and more accessible to an international audience.” Since buying the name, Mi.com has become Xiaomi’s official website, with the majority of the company’s products also using “Mi” in their product names.
Whisky.com - $3.1 million - 2014
Horst Luenig of The Whisky Media Corporation bought Whisky.com for $3.1 million in 2014 from The Castello Brothers. The name now hosts the company’s website that gives some incredibly in-depth information about Whisky. This name has a great meaning to NamePros, since Horst took part in our first ever Inside Interview to explain why he paid $3.1 million to own this domain.
Vodka.com - $3 million - 2006
Vodka, as it turns out, is $100,000 cheaper than Whisky! Bought by Russian Standard in 2006, Vodka.com was sold by Roy Messer, the owner of FreeStuff.com in a transaction that was brokered by Sedo.
According to DNJournal, Messer and the Sedo broker were invited to St Petersburg, Russia to meet Roustam Tariko, the billionaire entrepreneur who owns Russian Standard Vodka. It’s a great story that’s well documented on DNJournal.
Candy.com - $3 million - 2009
This is another domain name that was sold by Domain King, Rick Schwartz. Sold to G&J Holdings, the domain has been put to great use since then. The site has been fully developed into an online store, offering thousands of candy products.
The name is number one on Google in the USA for the popular search term “candy”, and the domain currently has a USA Alexa ranking of 72,728. If you’re interested in reading more about this deal, Rick has the details on his blog.
This article is part of a series: View Series
Every so often, DNJournal publishes a domain sale priced at $1 million or more. In this mini series, we’ve taken a look back at all the domain names that DNJournal has listed as selling for over $1 million from 2004 to 2016, to see what they’re currently used for.
Part one is Sex.com through to Candy.com. For your own reference, we shall include a table showing each domain name with their sales price, and the year the name was sold at the bottom of each article in the series.
Sex.com - $13 million - 2010
One of the most famous domain names of all time, with a checkered history. A book was also written about the domain and the legal action that surrounded the name. As you would expect, the website the domain is hosting now is definitely NSFW, but it seems to still be a popular destination with a global Alexa ranking of 945.
Fund.com - $9,999,950 - 2008
In March 2008, a company called Clek Media announced they had brokered the sale of Fund.com to the company Fund.com, Inc. The business surrounding the domain name thrived until 2011, when according to Wikipedia, Fund.com lost 99% of its value. Currently the domain is being offered for sale by Igloo.com
Porn.com - $9.5 million - 2007
Another NSFW domain name is the $9.5 million Porn.com. This domain, with a global Alexa ranking of 725, was sold in 2007, but could have been sold again in 2013. According to DomainHistory.net, the name transferred from Moniker to Fabulous.com under privacy at some point in 2013. This could have just been a registrar change, or it could have been sold.
Porno.com - $8,888,888 - 2015
Three of the top four largest domain sales of all time are from the adult industry. This sale is from Rick Schwartz (@Rick Schwartz), and was first announced on TheDomains.com in 2015. Rick originally bought the name for $42,000 from a college student who bought the name for $5,000 a week before. Since then, Rick has apparently earned well in excess of $10 million from ads and redirects on the domain.
We.com - $8 million - 2015
This sale was first announced by NamePros in 2015. At the time, the domain’s new owner wasn’t known. It was confirmed that the new owner was from China, and we speculated that the domain could have been bought by Tencent - owners of the popular WeChat application. Since then, the name has become the new home of Wealth Evolution, a peer to peer (P2P) loan company based in Beijing.
Online jewellery retailer Ice.com bought the diamond.com domain name from Odimo Inc in 2006, and was used to to host a site educating visitors about diamonds, as well as offering diamond jewellery for sale.
According to TheDomains.com, Diamond.com was being offered for sale by GoDaddy in 2015. The domain currently doesn’t host a site, but looks to still be owned by the original buyer.
Z.com - $6,784,000 - 2014
A very rare one-letter .COM was sold by Nissan Motors to GMO Internet, one of Japan’s largest ISP operator. Z.com is one of just three one-letter .COM domains available, with the other two being Q.com and X.com. Currently, Z.com hosts a forex and commodities trading website, and is still owned by GMO Internet.
Slots.com - $5.5 million - 2010
Slots.com was purchased by Canadian billionaire Calvin Ayre, owner of Bodog; an entertainment brand that offers online gambling and sports betting. Currently the domain hosts a fairly basic website that links to gaming websites, along with a lot of text about online casinos and slots games.
Toys.com - $5.1 million - 2009
Sold in 2009 in a bankruptcy auction, Toys.com was bought by Toys R Us, outbidding National A-1 Advertising. The company then set up a website on the domain name, but 2015, the domain started forwarding to the Toys R Us main website.
Clothes.com - $4.9 million - 2008
In May 2008, Zappos bought the domain name Clothes.com for $4.9 million from IdeaLab. The purchase was brought to light after the company was acquired by Amazon in an all-stock deal worth $1.2 billion. As of writing, Clothes.com is still owned by the Zappos brand, but the website doesn’t resolve.
IG.com - $4.7 million - 2013
IG Group of London, England invested $4.7 million into buying this two-letter .COM domain. The sale was brokered by Tessa Holcomb of Igloo.com and Marcus Kocak, former Director of Domain Acquisitions at NetNames. IG.com was in use by iG, a Brazilian company before being sold. Around the same time, IG Group acquired IG.co.uk and IG.de. IG.com is now used to host IG Group’s popular trading platform.
HG.com - $3,770,000 - 2016
Announced very recently was the sale of HG.com. The news was first broken by DN.com’s blog, dnqueen.net. According to them, the domain was bought by a company called WanJiaHuanGou, and the name is currently forwarding to their existing website, wjhgw.com. The company that now owns HG.com also owns several other domain names including 65.com, 068.com and 682.com.
Mi.com - $3.6 million - 2014
Another two-letter .COM was sold in 2014, again with a multi million dollar price tag. This was acquired by Xiaomi, a Chinese based smartphone maker, which had revenues of $20 billion in 2015.
At the time, co-founder of Xiaomi, Li Wanqiang, said: “The new domain is simpler and more accessible to an international audience.” Since buying the name, Mi.com has become Xiaomi’s official website, with the majority of the company’s products also using “Mi” in their product names.
Whisky.com - $3.1 million - 2014
Horst Luenig of The Whisky Media Corporation bought Whisky.com for $3.1 million in 2014 from The Castello Brothers. The name now hosts the company’s website that gives some incredibly in-depth information about Whisky. This name has a great meaning to NamePros, since Horst took part in our first ever Inside Interview to explain why he paid $3.1 million to own this domain.
Vodka.com - $3 million - 2006
Vodka, as it turns out, is $100,000 cheaper than Whisky! Bought by Russian Standard in 2006, Vodka.com was sold by Roy Messer, the owner of FreeStuff.com in a transaction that was brokered by Sedo.
According to DNJournal, Messer and the Sedo broker were invited to St Petersburg, Russia to meet Roustam Tariko, the billionaire entrepreneur who owns Russian Standard Vodka. It’s a great story that’s well documented on DNJournal.
Candy.com - $3 million - 2009
This is another domain name that was sold by Domain King, Rick Schwartz. Sold to G&J Holdings, the domain has been put to great use since then. The site has been fully developed into an online store, offering thousands of candy products.
The name is number one on Google in the USA for the popular search term “candy”, and the domain currently has a USA Alexa ranking of 72,728. If you’re interested in reading more about this deal, Rick has the details on his blog.
| Domain Name | Sales Price | Year of Sale |
|---|---|---|
| Sex.com | $13 million | 2010 |
| Fund.com | $9,999,950 | 2008 |
| Porn.com | $9.5 million | 2007 |
| Porno.com | $8,888,888 | 2015 |
| We.com | $8 million | 2015 |
| Diamond.com | $7.5 million | 2006 |
| Z.com | $6,784,000 | 2014 |
| Slots.com | $5.5 million | 2010 |
| Toys.com | $5.1 million | 2009 |
| Clothes.com | $4.9 million | 2008 |
| IG.com | $4.7 million | 2013 |
| HG.com | $3,770,000 | 2016 |
| MI.com | $3.6 million | 2014 |
| Whisky.com | $3.1 million | 2014 |
| Vodka.com | $3 million | 2006 |
| Candy.com | $3 million | 2009 |
This article is part of a series: View Series
