Where Are They Now? Looking At The Top Three Domain Sales Of 2011

I have always enjoyed watching a big domain sale turn-into a real business. There are a million examples like RunningShoes.com where a great domain is bought and a real business is up and running almost instantly. In some cases people move their existing businesses to another domain, in other cases people sit on the domain leaving it blank until the business is built.

For me, as an entrepreneur it is always interesting to see when companies decide to pull the trigger and buy a domain, and how long until they start using this asset. So I thought it would be fun to look back at the top three sales of 2011 and see what the new owners are doing with the domains.

1. Social.com (7/7/11 – $2.6 million) – purchased for a whopping $2.6 million in July of last year this domain still sits dormant. I’m sure we’ll see something big on this domain, but it may take more than a year to do something as big as they’re planning.

2. DomainName.com (5/18/11 – $1.0 million) – a million bucks for the Domain Name of Domain Names and what better to use this name for than a registrar and hosting company. Makes perfect sense and I’m going to try to snag them for an interview to see if we can learn a bit more about how their business is doing since the acquisition of the name.

3. Aktien.de (7/27/11 – $725,000) – the word “stocks” in German sold for a cool 725K, a nice .DE sale but a steep price for what the site is being used for which it seems is an info product about stock investing. Still the product costs ~600 EUR so if there’s a lot of traffic there and the product sell well, maybe they are making their money back. Once again, I am reaching out for an interview here to see if I can learn a bit more.

I have a lot of fun doing this and look forward to sharing more details with all of you! In many cases I probably won’t get be able to get any one-on-one time with the owners of these sites but I’ll keep trying so I can bring all of you the latest scoop on the biggest domain sales of last year. As always, stay-tuned, there’s more to come!

(Sales data used comes from DNJournal.com)

Morgan Linton

Morgan Linton