Top 10 Most Expensive Domain Name Sales Ever, and What You Can Learn From Them

Registering a new domain name doesn’t usually break the bank. In fact, most registries charge about $25 or less.

But that applies to domain names that aren’t currently registered. What do you do if someone else has registered the perfect domain name for your company? One possibility is to use a new gTLD with your preferred domain name. Or, you could try to find out if you could buy the domain name from them. You would have to carefully weigh the costs: would you be losing out on a lot of sales if people go to the wrong website? If so, perhaps it does make sense to buy a domain name that is already in use.

That’s probably what motivated these companies to shell out millions of dollars to buy a domain name! Take a look at these incredible figures of the most expensive domain names of all time:

1. LasVegas.com – $90 million

2. CarInsurance.com – $49.7 million

3. Insurance.com – $35.6 million

4. VacationRentals.com – $35 million

5. PrivateJet.com – $30.18 million

6. Internet.com – $18 million

7. 360.com – $17 million

8. Insure.com – $16 million

9. Bankaholic.com – $15 million

10. Sex.com – $13 million

The year-to-date data is also quite eye-opening. Here are some of the highest selling domains in 2016 so far:

1. Jade.com – $1.25 million

2. LA.com – $1.2 million

3. TP.com – $929,000

4. YK.com – $900,000

5. Kiwi.com – $800,000

6. Rate.com – $725,000

7. DA.com – $650,000

8. Furniture.co.uk – $650,000

9. Wave.com – $420,000

10. Broker.com – $375,000

No. 3 is really interesting … Who do you suppose first registered the domain name TP.com? Maybe TP was someone’s initials. And maybe a more famous person with the same initials wanted the website (the site isn’t currently live, so we can’t solve the mystery just yet). Suddenly, the original owner is practically a millionaire.

What a way to make your millions.

Domain Flipping

In fact, some people intentionally buy domains in order to sell them for a higher price later. Is this lucrative? Well, it might be. But it is certainly risky, since nothing is guaranteed.

This practice is called “domain flipping.” As you can see from the list above, one-word domain names, especially industry-encompassing domain names, are very popular. This is likely due to the fact that hundreds of thousands of people will type the word “insurance” into Google on any given day. What better result to show first than insurance.com?

Of course, the site would need to be optimized further, but the general theory is that keyword rich domain names are useful for SEO purposes. If you can accurately predict the latest craze or industry that will bubble up in the future, maybe you can buy a domain now in hopes of selling it later. Just don’t bet the farm on it.

Did you notice another trend in the year-to-date data? Those two letter domain names seem pretty popular. LA.com makes sense, and a quick visit to the site makes it clear that the buyers intend to make it all about the city of Los Angeles. The other sites currently load no information, keeping us in the dark about what could be worth so much money. But maybe jumping on the acronym train would be one way to register a domain name in order to sell it later.

Expiring Domains

Expiring domains offer another avenue for you to buy a coveted domain name. But once the domain name expires, you can’t automatically pay $25 and simply register it again under your own name. That used to be how it worked, but registrars like to make money too, and these days expired domain names are usually put up for auction. The highest bidder gets it. And if no one bids at all, then the domain name can be registered to the first person who pops by with the $25 registration fee. However, most expired domains tend to be picked up again during the auctions.

Eagle-eyed entrepreneurs or businesspeople should keep their wits about them when hearing about new trends or crazes. If you’re comfortable taking risks, domain flipping could be an interesting way to try to make a little dough on the side. If you have technical skills, you can even spruce up the website a little bit, giving it a design and optimizing it for certain keywords in order to increase the selling price.

It’s just too bad you didn’t register LasVegas.com back in the day.

The post Top 10 Most Expensive Domain Name Sales Ever, And What You Can Learn From Them appeared first on SiteProNews.

~~~~~

BIN NOTE: If by now you haven’t figured out that Facebook and Google are in cahoots with the corrupt government, then I feel for you, but for those who are well aware of the issues it’s high time you switched over to Seen.life. It is a website that is similar to Facebook but without all the censorship.