15 of the most expensive domains of all time

A website can be a simple thing to set up, but picking a name for your page or for your business can be tricky if you’re doing it based on web addresses that haven’t been claimed already.

It’s no surprise then that all of the best, usually single word, domains are already taken – but how much do people pay for them?

Now, I know what you might be thinking, and no Sex.com isn’t the most expensive sale in this list, although it does feature pretty high up. What is? Read on to find out.

We’ve tried to keep the sale values accurate, and as such, haven’t included the sale of domains like Yellowpages.com (which went for over $100 million) and Insure.com (at $16 million) but also included other assets.

Interesting other additions that nearly made the list included Israel.com, which had been rumored to have been sold for $5.88 million in June 2008, but the sale apparently fell through. One of the conditions of the sale was that the new owner would be pro-Israel.

15 & 14. Korea.com and SEO.com

Korea.com is the most expensive national domain on the list, and was purchased in January 2000 for $5m.  SEO.com on the other hand was purchased for the same amount by the venture capitalist firm WashingtonVC in 2007.

13. Toys.com

Toys.com was snapped up by the childrens toy retailer ToysRUS in March 2009 for $5.1 million. A lot of money by most measures, but not even enough to get it into our top 10.

11 & 12. Casino.com and Slots.com

Though years apart and with completely different purchasers, the Casino.com and Slots.com domains both managed to fetch $5.5 million a-piece when they were sold in 2003 and 2010, respectively.

10. Beer.com

Beer.com sold in 2004 for $7 million to Thought Convergence but if you were hoping to pay it a visit for some hoppy entertainment, disappointment awaits. Today the site is nothing but a blank page.

9 & 8. Business.com and Diamond.com

Business.com and Diamond.com are the ninth and eighth most expensive domain name sales, with both reaching a not insubstantial $7.5 million asking price.

7. Fb.com

Fb.com was snapped up by the ever-growing social networking monster that is Facebook in 2010 for $8.5 million. Well, you do have to protect the most obvious contraction of your businesses name, don’t you? You can guess where it points now, but it’s also used as the domain for Facebook employee email addresses as “@facebook.com” addresses are available to the public.

6. Porn.com

You can probably take a good guess at what you might find on Porn.com, and that fact alone is precisely why it fetched a whopping $9.5 million when it sold in 2007.

5. Fund.com

Perhaps less familiar than some of the others on this list, Fund.com is reportedly a site for a (surprise, surprise) financial services company. However, at the time of writing, there’s nothing at the Fund.com address, which makes it $9.99 million well-spent in 2008.

4. Hotels.com

Hotels.com was bought for “around” $11 million in 2001; it seems the new owner couldn’t recall the exact price he had paid for it in an interview with the BBC. Easily done, though, eh. A million here, a million there.

3. Sex.com

Quite unsurprisingly, Sex.com is well-known for being one of the most expensive domain name purchases of all time, and given how much traffic searches around the term drives, it’s little surprise.

Most recently sold in 2010, Sex.com reached a cool $13 million according to data supplied by the domain name marketplace Sedo.

2. PrivateJet.com

PrivateJet.com came close to being the most expensive sale of all time, but was pipped at the post by a cool $5m or so. How expensive exactly was PrivateJet.com when it was sold in 2012? Very, at $30.18m.

1. VacationRentals.com

The most expensive sale, however, actually wasn’t for a gambling or porn site. Instead, it was the purchase of VacationRentals.com in 2007 for a cool $35m. Even more incredible than the price was the admission from new owner Brian Sharples, founder of HomeAway, that he had bought the domain to stop Expedia from getting it.

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