What’s in a Domain Name? Not much if it says NFT, study suggests

by James · February 15, 2023

Spending millions on the right to have an enticing website name might seem like a good idea if you have serious money to invest – but it won’t guarantee a good return on your investment, according to Hostinger research.

The web hosting provider looked at the seven most expensive domain names and found that while sex can sell in the world of web traffic, apparently non-fungible tokens (NFTs) don’t yet.

NFTs.com ranked worst for visits, receiving an undetectable amount of traffic since it was purchased for $15 million last August, despite being the third most expensive domain name on Hostinger’s list.

“The site currently contains very little information, but says it is ‘powered by DigitalArtists.com Marketplace,'” said Hostinger, which used the SimilarWeb tool to estimate monthly site visits.

“Despite the high price tag, there is not enough information to estimate traffic, indicating that very few people visit the site,” it added.

Similarly, Voice.com, another digital art token-oriented site, purchased in 2019 to serve as a platform for “technologists, artists and curators who use the transformative power of NFTs to make digital art collectable,” sees a relatively low amount of traffic—less than 89,000 monthly visitors—despite topping the list for sales price, a whopping $30 million.

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Sex still sells, get a room…

On the other hand, other sites performed predictably well. Sex.com, sold by Escom to Clover Holdings back in 2010 for a cool $10 million, seems to have proved a sound buy, with a staggering 64 million visitors queuing up to get a taste of the hottest every month.

“The provocative name receives more traffic than the rest of the top five sites combined,” Hostinger noted, adding that the domain had recently gone up for resale at auction, with bids starting at $20 million.

The oldest domain name on the list was also a solid performer – sold way back in 2001 for $11 million, which would cost about $18 million in today’s money, Hotels.com got the second highest monthly traffic, about 44.5 million hits.

One of Elon’s wiser purchases?

And Elon Musk will probably feel more confident that his 2014 purchase of Tesla.com for $11 million was a safer bet than his controversial Twitter purchase—today, the domain name has a respectable 16.9 million monthly visits. Just as well for the billionaire, as it took him a decade to wrest the prized moniker from the hands of Silicon Valley engineer Stuart Grossman.

“It’s fascinating to see how much money has changed hands for specific domain names – the cost of the seven names on the list totals more than $100 million,” said a Hostinger spokesperson.

“For multi-billion dollar companies, the expense is relatively small, especially if it secures your online presence, strengthens your brand and brings a good flow of traffic to your website. But as this study shows, spending millions of dollars on domain name millions of website visitors.”