The stories behind two of the largest nTLD sales to date

For decades, the aftermarket sale of Premium Domains has followed a specific patten: They’ve always been short, keyword-rich sales of predominantly .com domain names. But with the introduction of hundreds of new domain extensions, a new frontier of Premiums was born. Now, after several years of smart investors jumping onto the new TLD trend early, we’re beginning to see major payoff for those who were brave enough to invest in opportunity when they saw it.

While there have been a number of notable sales of aftermarket and Premium new TLDs, there are two that stand out—each of which brought in a whopping 6-figures in profit.

Free.games: Sold for $335,000

When Chad Wright from Webquest purchased free.games as part of a three-domain package for $100,000 in 2016, critics thought the move was crazy. Three years later, the domain sold for the record-breaking price of $335,000.

In an interview with the Domain Name Wire, Wright explained that he originally purchased the bundle (free.games, shooting.games, and racing.games) because they were phrases that had high search volume.

Wright is a well known domain investor with major domain deals under his belt, including the sale of tracy.com for $90,000 in 2012. But as the largest known sale of an nTLD between an investor a buyer, the free.games deal indicates that website and business owners are discovering the value of domains that use new TLDs—and that they’re willing to pay to get them.

Online.casino: Sold for $510,000

Just under a year ago, a team of SEO experts based out of Spain purchased the domain online.casino in an all-cash acquisition for a mind-boggling $510,000. It was, and is still, the biggest nTLD sale to date. According to the brains behind the operation (which include Magnus Hall, Lucas Gerhardsson, and Max Noremo), that was just the beginning—they have big plans for putting online.casino to work in a highly profitable way.

In an interview with DomainSherpa, the team explains that online.casino is their newest project with the ambitious plan to leverage the trio’s vast wealth of SEO knowledge for future profit. For them, the cost of the domain is well worth the level of opportunity it presents.

They hope to build out a brand and website around the newly acquired domain and believe that the highly-relevant, keyword-rich domain is the advantage they need to compete in an already competitive online space.

But you don’t need to spend 6 figured to score the perfect domain. Start your domain search.