2009 presented 8 domain names to cross the 7 figure mark and the remaining two domains in the top 10 were $845K and $770K respectively. So I wanted to see what has been made of these domain name purchases since making the top 10 reported domain name sales over at DnJournal.com .
Here is what I found out:
#1 Toys.com $5,100,000 Purchased by Toys R Us. Toys.com was initially forwarded to ToysRUs.com but was later built on a stand alone site. The domain was purchased around the end of 02/09 and by December 2009 I covered that Toys.com was back on P1 at Google in the # 6 spot. Today shows the same results, as Toys.com ranks #6 natural search spot for the search term toys.
#2 Candy.com $3,000,00 + 2% royalties off the gross for 15 years that will go to Rick Schwartz who sold the domain. I have covered this domain name extensively and you can get fully caught up about the Candy.com domain progress here. The domain name is now a fully developed business and it took about 1 year but has reached #1 natural ranking for the all important search term candy at Google.
#3 Fly.com $1,760,000 sold at Sedo.com about 2/3/2009 and purchased by Travelzoo. By August the domain name was put to use on a stand alone website and by June 2009, Travelzoo was running TV commercials with the powerful domain name. I covered the TV ads and more about Fly.com here. Fly.com currently ranks #1 natural search position at Google.
#4 Auction.com $1,700,000 was purchased by REDC, a real estate company. REDC put the domain name to use and built a stand alone website on this stunning domain name and it payed off big time for them! DotWeekly covered the domain name in January 2010 as Auction.com hit #1 at Google for the search term auction. $1.7 was a steal for this domain name and REDC is taking full advantage of it! Auction.com still holds the #1 spot at Google for the search term auction.
#5 Ticket.com $1,525,000 purchased October 14, 2009. Quoted from the current Ticket.com "Ticket.com has been a parked domain for a long time. We have an ambition to turn it into a major destination for the discovery of entertainment events and purchasing tickets! " 1 year after purchasing and the domain resides on a "coming soon" style website.
#6 Russia.com $1,500,000 sold at Sedo in December of 2009. The domain name currently sites on a standard GoDaddy.com "parking page".
#7 Call.com $1,100,000 sold in September 2009 and also currently resolves to a standard GoDaddy.com "parking page".
#8 Webcam.com $1,020,000 sold in June 2009 by RickLatona.com to FCI Inc. The domain name is currently in use on a stand alone website in the adult industry. Google shows little to no love to adult related website, so the search engine is not ranking the site very well for the matching term. Based on traffic indicators that I can see, the site only gets a couple thousand monthly unique visitors. This domain would likely do better selling webcam’s IMO!
#9 Flying.com $845,000 UsedAirplanes Inc purchased the domain from a private investor and the price paid was later revealed. It basically sold again in early 2010 for $1.1 Million. You can read more about the price for Flying.com and why I put the sale as #8 and DnJournal does not have it #8 for 2009. Flying.com is a stand alone website and currently has a #4 natural search engine ranking position at Google for flying. The company has purchased several high dollar domain names since, including UsedAircraft.com.
#10 Server.com $770,000 purchased in August 2009. At the time of purchase the domain name was parked but moved to a standard GoDaddy.com parking page. As of today, the domain name still resolves to a standard GoDaddy.com parking page.
I was shocked to find out that 3 of the 10 domain name in the top 10 domain sales of 2009 not only are parked but are sitting on a STANDARD GoDaddy parking page. The standard parking page ads make the domain name registrar money off any ads clicked, not the domain name owner! Godaddy does offer "Cash Parking" which the domain name owner would make the money from the parking page but all 3 mentioned above are standard parking pages and not Cash Parking pages. The easiest way to tell the difference is by looking at domain name servers.
6 of the 10 domain names are on stand alone websites!
1 coming soon style site.
$3,370,000.00 spent on 3 domains sitting on standard GoDaddy.com parking pages making GoDaddy money!
chris
Nice post, very interesting. Who would spend 7 digits and then let it sit on a parked page that makes them nothing?
Must be billionaires without a care in the world.
Leonard Britt
It might be an interesting analysis to gauge whether those which were built out appear to be generating a good return on the initial investment or otherwise…
Jon
People paying millions for a domain name don’t care about $500 dollars a year in parking, that is IMO why they don’t use their own parking page. It could also be ignorance of course, but I would imagine they did not buy the domain to park it.
Thank you for your list, very informative.
Jamie Zoch
@Jon,
Most million dollar domain names will make a great deal more than $500 a year in parking not even optimized! I have domain names that I paid under $100 that make $500 a year in parking even with how bad parking is right now. It very well could be ignorance and they forgot to change DNS but it really doesn’t make sense to let really any domain sit on a standard parking page giving the registrar the ad $$.
Jamie Zoch
@Leonard,
That would be really hard to do without the owners making earnings public and it is not likely to happen. If they did say anything, it may be that the investment was good or hasn’t panned out yet etc.
Jamie Zoch
@Chris,
oh, and to come up with the idea 
Thank you. I enjoy writing things like this as well, just takes a fair amount of time to do all the digging
kandyjet
thanks and very interesting article. webcam.com could change the plan and use the epik platform to sell some webcams atlest.