Here's a list of million-dollar, domain-only ".com" sales. Yup, a lot of cash can lie in a web address...
Date sold: July 2014
MM.com was sold for $1.2 million through Sedo in July 2014. It was purchased by Hangzhou Duomai E-Commerce Co. Ltd., a company behind other domain names, such as Game.com, JZ.com, and 4.cn.
The domain now redirects to a blank page with a random string of letters and numbers.
Date sold: November 2014
Silicon Valley electronics supplier Power Integrations bought Power.com to replace its old, less simple domain, PowerInt.com.
Date sold: October 2013
A man named Rick Schwartz registered eBet.com in 1996 for $100. He held on to it for nearly 20 years — making a juicy profit off of it when the domain company Network Solutions bought it for $1.35 million.
Because Schwartz has made a number of high-profile sales — you'll run into another much later in this list — he's earned the nickname "Domain King."
"When do I sell? When the domain name is ripe," he writes on his blog. "When is it ripe? When the right buyer comes along."
Year sold: 2006
Sig Solares (the CEO of Parked.com) "wasted no time pony up the $1,500,000" when he won Cameras.com in an auction in 2006, DN Journal reported at the time.
Solares estimated at the time that he could make up the $1.5 million in eight years, meaning if all went according to plan, he should have recouped his costs by now.
Year sold: 2009
Back in 2009, Paley Media, a consulting firm that owns a bunch of different country-specific domains, sold the URL to a "mystery buyer." Today, the URL just redirects to GoDaddy.com.
Year sold: 2007
"Tandberg Data, a leading global supplier and manufacturer of backup and archiving solutions, decided to take the cash offer for Tandberg.com from Tandberg, a leading global provider of visual communication products and services with dual headquarters in New York and Norway," the DN Journal wrote at the time of the sale.
The deal was actually completed in December 2006 but wasn't made public until early 2007.
Year sold: 2009
The domain site Afternic.com sold Ticket.com on behalf of another domain site, BuyDomains.com, for a hefty $1.5 million. After the sale, the site redirected to StubHub.com, but now redirects to a Swedish reservation site.
Year sold: 2008
Minnesota's Associated Computers Inc. sold the domain to ESS Data Recovery on February 1, 2008. ESS had been trying to buy the domain for a long time.
Year sold: 2009
Auction.com was rumored to be selling for even more money — $2.5 million. But it came in at $1.7 million after being purchased by Real Estate Disposition Corp.
Year sold: 2010
Dating.com was acquired at the DOMAINFest auction in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, in May 2012. The next-highest domain name to go at that auction was Boardgames.com, for $450,000.
Year sold: 2009
Travelzoo spent big bucks on Fly.com in January 2009. The site now operates similarly to the flight-finding service Kayak.
Year sold: 2007
It was a big 2007 for a man named Page Howe. He sold two domains that year, each for seven figures. Besides Seniors.com ($1.8 million), he sold Guy.com for $1 million.
Seniors.com now forwards to Seniorfriendfinder.com.
Date sold: March 2014
37.com was sold for $1.9 million during a private sale in March. The domain was purchased by Chinese gamemaker 37Wan.
Year sold: 2007
In October 2007, Computer.com cleaned up at the T.R.A.F.F.I.C. / Moniker domain-name auction. WallStreet.com was almost sold for $3 million there, but it didn't "meet the set reserve prices," according to DomainRich.
Today, Computer.com is a website for — you guessed it — buying computers.
Date sold: July 2013
114.com was sold privately for $2.1 million in mid-2013.
It was bought by a Chinese company because the number signifies "information" and can be used to call in restaurant and hotel reservations, according to DN Journal (similar to 411 in the US).
Date sold: November 2013
KK.com was sold through the Moniker/SnapNames brokerage firm for $2.4 million in late 2013.
The Domains reported at the time that Liang Zeng of Zijin Digital Plaza in Bejing, China bought the URL, but if you try to navigate to kk.com now, and you'll simply see a "Domain not active" message.
Date sold: March 2014
Youxi.com (which means "games" in Chinese), sold for $2.4 million in a private sale in March 2014. It was purchased by Gamewave Group Limited.
Year sold: 2012
Forexpros.com bought Investing.com in late 2012 for $2.45 million. It was the largest domain sale of the year.
The site is now chock-full of content about investing and the stock market.
Social.com — $2,600,000
Year Sold: July 2011
Moniker brokered a deal to sell social.com for $2.6 million in July 2011.
But don't expect any sort of fun chat site: Salesforce bought the URL and it now directs to one of the company's advertising pages.
Year sold: 2004
ClickSuccess L.P., a firm that sells financial tools and products online, purchased CreditCards.com in 2004. It was the biggest domain-only sale in years. Casino.com was part of a massive $5.5 million deal in 2003, but its sale included a number of other assets.
Date Sold: September 2009
German commerce company Unister GmbH bought Shopping.de having already purchased Auto.de, Geld.de, Kredit.de, and Preisvergleich.de.
Shopping.de is now a shopping website dedicated to upscale brands.
Geld = money
Kredit = credit or loan
Preisvergleich = price comparison
Year sold: 2009
Rick Schwartz sold Candy.com to G&J Holdings for a sweet $3 million in 2009.
G&J Holdings is owned by Greg Balestrieri and Joe Melville, cousins who grew up working in their family-owned candy company. They wanted to create easy access to sugary sweets online, so they made a big bet on the simple domain.
Year sold: 2006
A billionaire in Russia who owns the country's largest vodka maker, Russian Standard Co., purchased Vodka.com for $3 million in December 2006.
Date sold: March 2014
Whisky.com was sold by Castello Cities Internet Network in a domain-only sale. Michael Castello purchased the domain 19 years ago, in March 1995, when it cost nothing to obtain.
"I had the original registration in March of 1995, and I registered it for free," Castello wrote in DN Journal. "I always liked Scotch whisky, but the real reason I registered Whisky.com was because of the Whisky a Go Go night club in Hollywood. I always enjoyed “The Whisky”, with its musical heritage and scene where the likes of The Doors and Janis Joplin played. Years later, I even offered Whisky.com to the owner’s son and he told me he didn’t need it since they already registered WhiskyaGoGo.com. That rejection would prove to be good for me."
Date sold: April 2014
Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi purchased MI.com in the biggest domain sale of 2014 through a private sale. It's said to be the most expensive domain name purchased by a Chinese Internet company, and Xiaomi intends to use it to make its brand name easier to remember.
Date sold: September 2013
Igloo/NetNames helped sell IG.com for almost $5 million in September 2013. It was purchased by London's IG Group; it was previously owned by Brazil search engine iG.
Doctors confer in the Rehabilitation Unit of Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami, September 30, 2013.
Date sold: May 2014
eHeathInsurance.com paid $4.8 million for Medicare.com last spring.
It paid $4.3 million in cash and $300,000 in debt, according to Domain Name Sales Report.
Year sold: 2008
Shoe company Zappos coughed up almost $5 million for the domain Clothes.com.
Now both are owned by Amazon, but Clothes.com still redirects to Zappos's apparel selection, not Amazon's main site.
Year sold: 2009
Toys.com was originally sold for $1.25 million as part of a bankruptcy-court proceeding.
Then, days later, it was put up for auction again and Toys R Us ended up shelling out just over $5 million for the powerful domain name.
Toys.com now redirects to the official Toys "R" Us website.
Year sold: 2010
As TechCrunch pointed out at the time of the sale, that is more than $1 million per character.
Date sold: November 2014
The Japanese internet service provider GMO Internet bought Z.com from Nissan Motors for 800 million yen, or about $6,784,000.
Z.com is one of only three single-character domain names currently existing in the ".com" space, GMO says.
Odimo.com handed over the domain to an online jewelry retailer, Ice.com, in a private sale for one of the priciest domain-name swaps of all time.
Year Sold: 2015
Alf Temme sold the domain after owning it for almost nine years. It was one of his smoother sales; in 2010 Microsoft sued him for owning ho0tmail.com and hot5mail.com and having them redirect to his businesses website.
Wealth Evolution, a Chinese banking service bought the website.
Date sold: February 2015
Add an "o" and the deal gets even better.
The story of how "Domain King" Rick Schwartz flipped Porno.com is pretty incredible.
He bought it from a college kid way back in 1997, paying $42,000, even though the kid had snagged it for only $5,000 the week before.
Schwartz told The Domains that since then the site earned "well in excess of over $10 million via parking and redirects without every providing actual adult content." Meaning that he likely reeled in more than $20 million total from the scandalous domain.
The buyer in February's massive, all-cash sale was reportedly a company in Prague that also owns Swingers.com and PornoTv.com.
Year sold: 2007
At the time of its sale, Porn.com was the biggest all-cash transaction for a domain name and the second-largest domain sale behind Sex.com's $12 million exit. Moniker helped sell the domain to MXN Limited.
Year sold: 2008
Clek Media brokered a deal that few people believed was real: The URL was purchased by a company called Fund.com in an all-cash deal in 2008.
After the flashy sale, Fund.com ran into a lot of trouble. It had to declare most of its financials unreliable in 2009 and continuously failed to file reports. The man behind it — Jason Galanis — reportedly has an interesting history. If you go to the site now, it won't load.
Year sold: 2010
Sex.com entered the Guinness Book of World Records for the highest domain-only sale in history.
Escom LLC, which had gone bankrupt, sold it to Clover Holdings Ltd.
"It was not immediately clear what Clover Holdings plans to do with the web address," Reuters reported at the time, but we think we can probably guess.
Other expensive domain names not listed by DNJournal (either because they were sold prior to 2003 or other assets were sold with the domains):
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