Some of you who read me know that for many years, specifically since my beginnings, I have always been related to online business .
When I was just 18 years old, I registered my first internet domain to host a web page about rock groups that I set up together with another young man passionate about the genre. After several websites under free and paid servers, I decided to register the rockmusic.org domain on August 18, 1997 and under it we hosted all the information we had been collecting for months.
Why the reason for this blog post? Well, because over the years I registered dozens of domains as an investment until I had a portfolio of up to 500 domains at its peak. For years there was a market for the sale of domains that moved much more than now, especially in the Hispanic world, since many websites and a lot of business began to appear in the online world.
But let's go in parts...An internet domain or extension, as Wikipedia indicates, is a unique name that identifies a website on the Internet . The main purpose of Internet domain names and the Domain Name System (DNS) is to translate the IP addresses of every asset on the network into memorable, easy-to-find terms. In short, and not to make it too complicated, an internet domain is the name of the web page in question. The domain of my blog is "vivirtente.com" .
Depending on their extensions: .com, .net, .org, .es, .co.uk, the domains are included in territorial, generic, non-profit organization, etc.
For example, in Spain before, to register a .es domain, you could only do it if you had the registered trademark or your company was named as you wanted to register the domain. You could not register, for example, casino.es if you did not have "casino" as a registered trademark or if your company was not called "Casino, SL". After a time that limit was removed and speculation about our territorial domain market also began .
A domainer is an investor in high-quality domain names in order to make a profit through them, either by subsequent resale or through direct traffic.
Surely I have become old-fashioned in the world of domainers but in my retina there are the first Hispanic domainers who had great portfolios and who made a lot of money with them:
Christian Chena: only 2 years older than me, but much more savvy, Chris managed to register such important domains for Spanish-speaking people at the time, such as Juegos.com or Viajes.com, which he later sold for millionaire sums and which he later bought until a television channel in his native country, Uruguay. He also managed to get cars.com for a good figure and then managed to resell, if I'm not mistaken, for about 1 million euros. Carlos Blanco: is a well-known Spanish investor and online business entrepreneur who has been investing in domains through his companies for many years. Moreover, according to his post «Real case of return on investment in domains» from the year 2013, he gives us data on investment in domains that cannot leave anyone indifferent:
There are also domainers who are not people, but companies that have been moving thousands of domains for years, such as: Demand Media, Marchex, BuyDomains , etc. with portfolio purchase operations in thousands and hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Now there are many registrars and companies that are dedicated to registering any domain name and in real time at relatively low costs. When I registered rockmusic.org as my first domain, the prices per year for having a domain in your name were not what they are now, not even close. We are talking about the fact that it used to cost about $100 dollars a year to have a domain and now it can cost you about $10 dollars . At that time, the possibility of doing business by reselling domains did not even cross my mind, and look, there were interesting free names that were later sold very expensive. Apart from the fact that I did not see "business" at that time (deluded me), paying $100 dollars a year for a domain was beyond my financial means. I remember with nostalgia when we registered the domain rapidnic.com from which we offered registration of .com, .net and .org domains to our clients . There was a client, whose name I am not going to say, who registered hundreds of domains a month for us with the aim of reselling them later. The truth is that he invested a lot of money and the truth is, I don't know if the investment really worked out for him or not, but I do remember that he received lawsuits or notices from lawyers from large companies for trying to take advantage of their clients' brands to do business. I remember the case of domains like mercadona.org, for example. Today we have all our domains registered with three different providers, depending on how long they have been registered and their endings: MrDomain, Nicline (Arsys) and Virtualname.net
Surfing the net and collecting from various sites, I put below a table with some certified data of the most expensive domains that have been sold. Be careful, there may be domains that have been sold for much more money with or without an attached project, but many operations have never been disclosed to the public.
| Domain | Amount | Year |
| carinsurance.com | $49.7 million | 2010 |
| Insurance.com | $35.6 million | 2010 |
| VacationRentals.com | $35 million | 2007 |
| PrivateJet.com | $30.1 million | 2012 |
| Voice.com | $30 million | 2019 |
| internet.com | $18 million | 2009 |
| 360.com | $17 million | 2015 |
| Insure.com | $16 million | 2009 |
| fund.com | $9.99 million | 2008 |
| sex.com | $14 million | 2005 |
| sex.com | $13 million | 2010 |
| hotels.com | $11 million | 2001 |
| porn.com | $9.5 million | 2007 |
| Shoes.com | $9 million | 2017 |
| porn.com | $8.8 million | 2015 |
| fb.com | $8.5 million | 2010 |
| We.com | $8 million | 2015 |
| business.com | $7.5 million | 1999 |
| Diamond.com | $7.5 million | 2006 |
| Beer.com | $7 million | 2004 |
| Z.com | $6.8 million | 2014 |
| iCloud.com | $6 million | 2011 |
| israel.com | $5.8 million | 2008 |
| casino.com | $5.5 million | 2003 |
| slots.com | $5.5 million | 2010 |
For me, the most curious thing about the list is that of all the domains listed, all the names are Anglo-Saxon except “porn” and “casino” (which is used for Anglo-Saxon and Hispanic). If you look closely, all the endings of the most expensive resold domains are «.com» since it is the generic par excellence and the one that everyone who browses the internet knows. Logically Casino.com will always have more value than Casino.es
✅ Web development: you can create a website related to your domain name and be able to earn income either by selling products or advertising related to them.
✅ Domain parking: there are companies that you can register with that insert specific advertising on your parked domains and you earn money every time someone visits them and clicks on the ads. Normally there is no cost and you are not contractually bound to maintain your domain, you can also add the domains you want whenever you want and stop doing so at any time.
✅ Rental: there could be someone interested in renting one of your domains for a certain time to sell some type of product or service.
Today I consider that investing in internet domains is no longer profitable unless you have a good portfolio built up years ago that gives you some return and passive income through the “parking” or “rental” option. For my part, I will always have some domains in my portfolio, especially those that I consider most important, although many people find them lazy. Of course, over the years I will continue to discard those whose meaning loses value or have not received a single visit or search for periods of more than a year.
| Contact us |
|---|
| About us |
| Terms of Service |
| Privacy Policy |
| Disclaimer |