Business.com has sold to specialty search company R. H. Donnelly for $350 million. (press release) That’s a lot of dough for a domain name, even if it is a domain that also hosts a business directory and pulls in $15 million a year in revenue: The site went for a whopping 23 times revenue. It’s also almost 47 times as much as Jake Winebaum and Sky Dayton paid for the domain back in 1999.
A 23x multiple is not unheard of in the tech business, but it certainly reflects the frothiness of the market that a simple vertical portal with modest revenues could command that much of a premium. It’s also a sign of the zeal with which companies are pursuing “hot properties” in the Web’s version of a real estate market, the domain name system. And make no mistake: I’d guess that 90% of the business’s value can be attributed to the domain name itself, not the directory. In other words, you could put almost anything at that domain and be able to rake in a few million dollars a year in ad revenue without even trying.
So, congratulations to Winebaum and Dayton. Let’s just hope this isn’t the latest sign of irrational exuberance in Dot Com Boom 2.0.
Below, a list of the highest prices ever paid for domain names.
Photo: Daniel Filho
Domain Year Sold Price ($millions) <p> Business.com | 2007 | 350 </p>
Sex.com | 2006 | 14 </p>
Porn.com | 2007 | 9.5 </p>
Business.com | 1999 | 7.5 </p>
Diamond.com | 2007 | 7.5 </p>
Casino.com | 2003 | 5.5 </p>
Korea.com | 1999 | 5 </p>
Asseenontv.com | 2002 | 5 </p>
Worldwideweb.com | 1996 | 3.5 </p>
Altavista.com | 1999 | 3.35 </p>
Wine.com | 1999 | 3.3 </p>
Eshow.com | 1999 | 3 </p>
Loans.com | 1999 | 3 </p>
