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Clek Media Inc. (”Clek”) today announced that it has brokered the world-record sale of the domain FUND.COM for US$9,999,950 in an all-cash transaction. Clek, a media consulting firm, represented the seller of the domain, assisting in both the negotiation and closing of the transaction. The buyer is Fund.com Inc. (OTCBB: FNDM), a New York firm previously named Meade Technologies Inc. To date the buyer has revealed their plans for the domain mostly in filings with the US Securities and Exchange Commission.
Clek believes that the nearly $10 million purchase price for FUND.COM represents the highest price ever paid for an Internet domain. The purchase price tops what the Guinness World Records books report as the highest previous price, the memorable BUSINESS.COM purchase. Ex-Disney executive, Jake Winebaum of eCompanies Ventures, acquired BUSINESS.COM for $7.5 million in 1999, which created some public media controversy at that time for the seemingly high price. However, in July 2007 BUSINESS.COM was sold to yellow pages publisher, RH Donnelly, for $345 million, 47 times the purchase price of the domain.
Business and Wall Street investors continue to assign higher values to internet domains. According to MSNBC, the domain CREDITCARDS.COM was acquired for $2.75 million all-cash and SEC filings reveal that the $20 billion hedge fund, American Capital Strategies, and Austin Ventures invested $135 million in CREDITCARDS.COM. Regarding the CREDITCARDS.COM sale, MSNBC quoted ClickSuccess CEO Dan Smith, “It’s like prime real estate, there’s only so much of this real estate to go around. I feel like we bought a slice of Park Avenue.”
(via Press Release)
Dominik,
Any idea if it was strictly a domain sale or was a business included?
Nice amount of $$ there.
Domain name get’s a reasonable amount of traffic but not many links (website must be ppc marketed).
Anyway this is a great sale.
Judging from the press release it was a domain-only sale.
Archive.org shows an active website from early 2007 saying there was a FUND.com trademark owned by Arausio Properties. It was a very basic content website with Amazon.com affiliate links though and it doesn’t look like Fund.com was used for a real business website.
I don’t have any inside information but it’s possible that the FUND.com TM was part of the deal.
irs.com sold for $11.1MM…although I doubt the current owners want that in the news
Again not a bad payday. Considering it was just the domain it is a good payday. Not surprising, four letter domain, that is a word and related…
dcd: Do you know whether the $11 M price was for the domain IRS.com only? I believe that domain was owned by a company back then and InterSearch bought the entire company to get it, but I’m not 100% sure and I didn’t quickly find any source for this information.
Hustle Strategy: Yes, a very good payday indeed.
My only question would be, who is Clek Media and why didn’t they report this sale earlier, since the domain was last updated in January 2008 according to its whois?
Interesting, just googled it and looks like IRS.com sold for $12.5M a year ago to Intersearch.com
The vast majority of sales don’t get reported so there is a good chance there are other higher sales we are not aware of.
It seems that the “world’s greatest domain sale” has been brokered by a company that has no web presence, at least not as of this writing. I cannot find any info on Cleck Media Inc., the company that was reported to have brokered the deal, other than press releases. A whois search on clekmedia.com and clekmediainc.com produced the following results: both were registered within the past 24 hours, both with private registrations. One is parked at Domain Sponsor and one is for sale. While this is a common occurrence, riding on the coat-tails of news releases and both are most likely not related to Clek Media, it still brings to question the lack of web presence for Clek Media. Does anyone have any information on this company? DN Journal reported it “confirmed” the sale. With so much at stake here, when is a reported sale considered a sale? What is considered “confirmed”? By whom and according to who? Bogus press releases are commonplace and often revealed in domain forums, often months after the original release date. While I have no reason to believe this sale to be untrue, it would be nice if there were some sort of standard on confirming sales.
dominik-
the company acquired was a shell that held irs.com. the domain was monetized via CPA/flat-rate deals with various tax prep providers (notably H R Block)