If you think you paid a decent sum of money for the last domain you bought, have a look at the names that are the worlds most valuable...
$300 million - Business.com - yes, that'd how much has recently been paid for it!
$7.5 million - Diamond.com - guess what they sell?
$7.0 million - Beer.com - and we hope they had a drink when they paid that for it!
$5.5 million - Casino.com - a risky bet or worth the odds?
$5.0 million - AsSeenOnTV.com - well it sounds a lot for the name to us!
$5.0 million - Korea.com - a site all about the country, unsurprisingly!
$3.5 million - Shop.com - sold in 2003 we think this would make x10 this sum now.
$3.3 million - AltaVista.com - and guess who owns it? They bought it in 1999.
$3.2 million - Software.com - a software download site. You don't say!
$3.0 million - Vodka.com - this site is currently under development.
$3.0 million - Loans.com - owned by the Bank of America it is for redirection purposes only.
$2.8 million - CreditCards.com - in the midst of a global recession...
$2.5 million - Tom.com - a Chinese website that we couldn't read...
$2.2 million - Autos.com - a car and truck retailer.
$2.2 million - Coupons.com - wonder if they had a discount code?
$2.0 million - Telephone.com - you need a login for this one.
There are two others than have gone for $14 million and $9.5 million but we can't list them. Why? Because if we do we'll get lots of traffic that we don't want to. Think about it....they're 'adult orientated' sites.
Another 25 domain names have sold for in excess of $1 million and many of them were of an adult nature.
Tim Berners-Lee, the founder of the internet, owns Cool.com. He claims to have rejected an offer of over $300 million for it. If that is true, and considering the report is some years old, it is probably the most valuable domain name in the world.
The man who bought Businss.com in 1996 paid a mere $150,000 for it. We're sure it seemed like a lot of money at the time, but 3 years later he sold it for a profit of $7,350,000.
Earlier this month (April 2009), the domain Webcam.com sold for just in excess of $1 million.
Fly.com, Body.com and Auction.com have all sold in 2009 for considerable amounts of money, but the domains of Camera.com and MobileWebCams.com remain available for purchase.
The domain reseller Tucows.com hit hard times early in 2009 and sold a portfolio of domain names (2,553 of them) for $1 million. That's just under $400 per domain.
The buyer of the Tucows.com domains has an option to buy another large batch - next time for $1.8 million.
In 2008 the UK record for a domain name was broken when Cruises.co.uk was bought for $1 million.
Of course, an expensive domain doesn't assure you of success. A company called Topix bought Topix.com for $1 million (they already owned Topix.net) - and lost a collosal amount of traffic!
