Rick Schwartz the Domain King, has just sold the domain name Porno.com for $8,888,888 in an all cash transaction handled by Escrow.com.
The sale will rank as the 4th highest publicly reported, all cash, domain sale of all time, according to DNjournal.com.
Porno.com becomes the highest reported domain name sale in five year, since of Sex.com resold in 2010 for $13 million dollars.
Rick bought this domain in August of 1997 for $42,000 “from a college student that bought it the week before for $5,000″
Since owning the domain name, the Domain King told us that Porno.com “has earned well in excess of over $10 million via parking and redirects without ever providing actual adult content.”
So Rick’s $42,000 investment generated over $20 Million.
By comparison, if you bought $1,000 worth of stock of Amazon at the IPO price in 1997 according to statista.com, the $1,000 would be worth about $239,000, so a $42K investment in Amazon at its IPO price would be worth a about $10 Million today, or less than half of Rick’s return on the domain name Porno.com.
Clearly this will go down as one of the greatest investments of all time.
Of course as we have often chatted about the only way to get the kind of number Rick did on this sale is to say no to other large offers.
Rick says he turned down $5,000,000 for the domain before and never looked back.
In this round Rick turned down $7.5 million before settling on the nearly $8.9 Million dollar sales price.
The buyer is a company out of Prague which owns other great domain names including Swingers.com and PornoTv.com.
You might think Schwartz sells a lot of domains, but at the heart of his 20 year plan was holding on and not selling.
As a matter of fact, Schwartz has only sold 20 domain names in those 20 years.
Five of those domains for 7 figures including Men.com for $1.3MM in 2003, eBet.com for 1.365MM in 2013, Candy.com for $3MM in 2008 plus a 12% ownership stake, Property.com for $4M in 2009 plus a 5% stake there, as well as stock in Punchbowl.com which he sold to MyPunchbowl a few years ago.
In a press release out today, Schwartz says about domains: “Use an easy to remember and easy to spell domain name and never settle for anything without .com on the end unless you use your local country code. But even then, having the .com counterpart is very important.”
The “Domain King” has been trying to educate business about domain names since 1996. His site eRealEstate.com, circa 1996-2000 still has his original thoughts from an era where only 5% of businesses were actually online with a web presence. He ran RicksBlog.com until 2014 and his every thought about business and domains is still there and completely accessible.
In closing Mr. Schwartz teased that there are other big domain sales on the horizon saying:
“Stay tuned, as he plans to sell domains like 399.com, 750,.com, 899.com and 12 other 3 numbered .com domains (NNN.com) that are very heavily in demand in China.
345.com recently sold for $800,000 and with 15 such numerical domains, Schwartz plans to celebrate in a big way as he celebrates 20 years this coming December.
An amazing domain and an amazing sale.
Congrats to the Domain King and the buyer.
For the rest of us further proof that the number 8 is really lucky, especially when you get 7 of them
All in cash.
