Most Expensive Domain Names

Every year Forbes comes out with these great lists for the "World Richest People", "World’s Richest Billionaires" and even more specific one’s like "World’s Richest Supermodels". They always get me with their top 500 richest issue, I like to keep track of the who’s moved up and down… and why. In addition to profiling the world’s richest people, Forbe’s also reports on some other great niches, like "Top 5 Most Expensive Domains". Below is there list of top selling domains… don’t you wish you picked these up back in the 90’s!

1. Sex.com $12 million Originally registered by Gary Kremen, a Silicon Valley software salesman, in 1994. Sold in a private sale for a mixture of cash and stock to Boston-based Escom LLC in January 2005.

2. Porn.com $9.5 million MXN Limited bought its way into the porn industry in May. Brokered by Moniker.com, the deal stands as the largest all-cash URL transaction ever.

3. Business.com $7.5 million Sold to ECompanies Venture Group, headed by former Disney executive Jake Weinbaum, in 1999. Yet even the highly prized name couldn’t protect the business from the dot-com bust; the site is now a parking lot for other URLs.

4. Diamond.com $7.5 million Odimo sold this jewel of a site–along with its jewelry inventory–to Ice.com, an online retailer, in May 2006. Ice.com paid cash for the site and an extra $2 million for Odimo’s bling.

5. Beer.com $7 million Originally owned by Bill Fisher, a Web site developer who also owned Budweiser.com and Guinness.com. Sold to Belgium-based Interbrew, the world’s second-largest brewer by volume, the site now features racy content aimed at a male audience.

If you missed out on these domains, don’t feel bad. There are still plenty of domains being sold for thousands upon thousands of dollars. Just when I was at Affiliate Summit East, Moniker held a live domain auction and "AffiliateDirectory.com" went for an insane $30,000! It’s a good name, but I didn’t think it was that great. You’d be surprised what’s selling for what. Whether you are buying domains to flip and sell, or build them up as established web sites, there is still an ever increasing demand for quality names and you never know who just might want yours next!

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Google Buys Feedburner

The continuing M&A battle between Google, Microsoft and Yahoo continues on… this time with Google picking up another winner. Earlier today I was reading an article on the possibility of Google acquiring Feedburner for around$100 Million. TechCrunch has just made a new post on the possible deal and now say it’s a "confirmed deal".

With the pickup of Feedburner, Google now has control over the massive RSS datafeeds running on the majority of blogs online. How long will it be before we start seeing Google Adsense built in our own feeds, and what pros/cons will this bring to the blogging market place?

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The Rich Jerk

I remember a few years ago when I first saw Kelly Felix’s The Rich Jerk. At first I wasn’t sure if it was a sales page or just someone being funny. Actually it was both! After going through the site I quickly realized it was a fully functioning business model. It’s really funny because he boasts about how much money he has right he has in your face, but still makes the user want to buy the product. The site is based on the guy being a "jerk" about how much money he has. One of my favorite parts of the site is in the FAQ section, it says:

Q: Why would a multi-millionaire jerk even bother selling a book online?
 A: Because obviously I’m getting even richer from sales of my book, even while reclining in my lounge chair in Fiji. When you offer a kick-ass product that makes money for both the buyer and seller, it’s a no-brainer.

The site is funny and tells it like it is, and for the longest time it was one of the best selling products on ClickBank. The site says they are still in the Top 10, but I did not see them listed. In addition to no longer being a top selling ClickBank program, it looks like the Rich Jerk himself is having some financial problems. As first reported on Shoemoney, apparently Kelly is nearly bankrupt and trying to work his way out. The site/business is now up for sale for $8 million.

I would not be surprised if the site sells, then to see Kelly in big money again. The thing about entrepreneurs and us online money makers, is it’s hard to keep us down!

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Merger Mania

Lately, every day there has been some speculation and or news on a new online marketing firm being picked up for millions… or even BILLIONS of dollars. Now that Microsoft has just picked up aQuantive for $6 Billion, we have seen the BIG 3 all take on new ad companies in their heavy competition to take each other out. We even had some exciting rumors on Microsoft finally deciding to buy Yahoo, but this ended up not happening. Yahoo then went on to buy RightMedia for $680 million. Microsoft also was very interested in 24/7 Media, but then WPP Group (the world’s No. 2 advertising firm) went on to purchase 24/7 Media for $649 million! When Google had originally purchased DoubleClick for an amazing $3.1 billion, some said it was way overpriced and Google was insane. Now that Microsoft has purchased aQuantive for an even more insane $6 Billion… people are now saying Google got DoubleClick as a steal and Microsoft bought aQuantive through panicking.

Here’s a quick review of what’s been going on lately…

Here’s a quick list of the lonely ad firms that have yet to be picked up… with ValueClick being the main target of speculation on being picked up next. Many felt ValueClick was next to be picked up and that Microsoft would have been the company to do it. In comparison between aQuantive and ValueClick, their 2006 reveue numbers are nearly the same. (ValueClick 2006 Revenue: $545.6 M /Income: $62.6 M - aQuantive 2006 Revenue: $442.2 M / Income: $54.0 Million). Based on their numbers and the buyout craze, ValueClick could be valued for $6 BILLION+. While ValueClick is the only public company below, the other two are still industry leaders in advertising.

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Club Penguin

Take a moment before reading this post and visit ClubPenguin.com. Be sure to glance through a couple pages and see what it’s about. Now look at the site again and take a guess at how much you think the site makes per month/year? At first you may think this is just a fun little community for just kids… but it’s really a massively huge cash cow! Think of World of Warcraft, but on a smaller scale and targeted towards a younger audience. TechCrunch reports that ClubPenguin is on it’s way to possibly being acquired from Sony for around $500 million dollars! TechCrunch also reports that ClubPenguin has "projected revenues of $65 million in 2007 with $35 million in profit. Having nearly 50% bottom line margin is exceptional. The company has around 500,000 active users."

Where is the money you may ask? If you look at their "membership plans" you will see that you can signup for a monthly fee and have access to cool member benefits, such as dressing up your penguin or decorating your own igloo! As silly as the idea might sound, it’s making a ton of cash and user activity/signups are still going strong. There is an amazing amount of money in offering paid memberships and monthly billing. If you have had trouble with making the next big step in making big money online, you may want to think about starting up your own paid membership based site. You will need to work hard on bringing in new subscribers, but will soon have a nice recurring source of revenue each month. While there are the usual dating, gaming, greeting cards, hosting and other sites that have paid memberships, something new and original (like ClubPenguin) would heavily increase your likelihood of growth and success. After all… how many paid subscribers have you been signed up to and forgot, or were too lazy to cancel them… someone is cashing in? Why not you!

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