In today’s world of online commerce and information exchange, owning your company’s domain name is everything. In fact, it’s a good idea to snag any domains that could possibly be used to compete with yours, as well. The battle for the domain names of competitors in any given industry is fierce, with prices shooting into the millions. If you already own Insurance.com, how much is it worth to secure its competitor, Insure.com? In the world of vertical marketing, it turns out that number is quite high. Sometimes, a company has a highly-sought-after domain name. Other times, individuals buy up domain names with no website attached and wait to be approached for a purchase. Figuring out which ones will skyrocket in value can be a bit of a gamble, but there are ways that you can predict if a particular domain name will be a worthwhile investment.
What do the highest-priced domain sales have in common? The domain names are all fairly simple; most of them consist of only one word. From Fund.com and Hotels.com to even Sex.com, these are all single words that are frequently searched by internet users who are hunting for specific content. Many of them also feature keywords with a high cost-per-click. (The CPC for “insurance,” for example, is extremely high.) Another thing these sites have in common? You’ll notice that they all end in .com.
Traditionally, porn websites, online gambling, and those belonging to investment companies tend to be the ones that score the highest sell prices. As you can see from this infographic created by the team at PAC Web Hosting, insurance and travel seem to have edged gambling and investment companies out for the top slots (no gambling pun intended). Power player QuinStreet features prominently on the list, scoring three out of the ten highest-priced purchases. 2009 was a big year for QuinStreet, as they purchased Internet.com in August for a cool $18 million and Insure.com in September for $16 million. Not content to rest on their laurels, in 2010 they went on to purchase Insurance.com for a whopping $35.6 million, ranking in at the most expensive domain name purchase ever.
From insurance to sex, hotels to a strangely-empty lending site (currently, there is not an active website at Fund.com), you may be surprised at the prices paid for some of these domain names. One thing is for sure: internet real estate, like brick-and-mortar real estate, is a serious business.
