We all know people can create website and sell them to make money. We call it as website flipping. You will be surprised to know that people also make money by domain flipping. Domain flipping is different from website flipping. In this case, you buy exclusive domain names like (Hotel.com, Education.com, World.com) and sell them at highly price using services like Flippa or private sell.
Domain selling business is not as old as origin of websites. Most of the people, who are into this business, purchase domain names and they will get good value for their investment in the future. They maintain the website with these domain names and wait for the opportunity. There is no surety of expected profit.
Top 10 Most Expensive Domain Names
In this list, all domain names are .com names. We don’t see any single .org, .info or others. I’m sure you will be surprised to see the list of top most expensive domain name here and the price. Sex is the keyword everywhere and this is true in the case of this list. Porn websites are the biggest seller.
This is a list of some of the highest prices paid for domain names as noted in the news and media.
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01. Insurance.com, $35.6 million in 2010
Insurance.com sold its corporate name and related domain name to QuinStreet who also bought Internet.com for $35.6 million, making it the most expensive domain name ever sold.
02. VacationRentals.com, $35 million in 2007
VacationRentals.com – This deal took place in 2007 and the transaction was for $35 million. Brain Sharples, the founder of HomeAway, is new owner of this domain and admitted that he purchased it, as he did not want his competitor Expedia to acquire it.
03. PrivateJet.com, $30.1 million in 2012
PrivateJet.com – This deal came very close to become the all-time highest deal ever made for domain selling. This transaction happened in 2012 at $ 30.1 million.
04. Internet.com, $18 million in 2009
Internet.com is a one of the most expensive domain names and QuinStreet, Inc purchased it for $18,000,000 in 2009. The Internet.com Network is comprised of many different brands focusing on developers, IT, Internet news, personal technology and small business.
05. Insure.com, $16 million in 2009
This deal took place in 2009 at the price of $16 million from QuinStreet.
06. Sex.com, $14 million in November 2010
Sex.com – Here comes the first deal from porn industry. The deal was made for $14 million and happened in November of 2010. This domain is doing very well, as it is linked with one of the most searched keyword on search engines.
07. Hotels.com, $11 million in 2001
According to a recent interview with BBC, David Roche, the CEO of hotels.com purchased for $11 million, revealed that they had originally acquired the domain hotels.com in 2001 but later they sold the company for $1.1 Billion.
08. Fund.com, $9.99 million in 2008
Fund.com – It was purchased in the year 2008 at a whooping price of $ 9.9 million. This domain is meant for a financial service, however, this domain is still not live. I don’t know if owner is waiting to resell this domain in near future.
09. Porn.com, $9.5 million in 2007
We don’t know the exact figures, but we can imagine the number of daily visitors to Porn.com is much higher than even we can estimate. MXN wouldn’t release exact numbers when it purchased the adult industry’s top domain; it only said that it paid more than $9 million. A writer for Moniker.com, a domain name service, did a little more research and discovered it was sold for a minimum of $9.5 million.
10. Fb.com by Facebook for $8.5 million in November 2010
Fb.com – Facebook purchased fb.com in November 2010 at a price of $ 8.5 million from American Farm Bureau Federation. At present this domain is redirected to www.facebook.com, but hopefully Facebook will make good use of this domain and the money spent on purchasing it.
If you enjoyed this list of most expensive domain names, don’t forget to share it on Facebook and Twitter and let others know about this lucrative business model. Also, if you have ever experienced domain flipping yourself, do share your experience.
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