A reader sent me a link to an article from a Dutch entrepreneurial website, and the author reported that he spent $1 million to acquire the Meal.com domain name in 2019. On the about us page on Ondernemer.nl (dutch for Entrepreneur), the Publisher, Mitchel van Duuren, reported that he acquired Meal.com after founding MealPlanner.com and rebranded the business under the shorter domain name.

Here’s the excerpt from the page, with the English translation courtesy of Google Translate below the original excerpt:

“Ik kocht de domeinnaam mealplanner.com en huurde developers in om mijn visie tot leven te brengen. Deze visie bleek steeds groter te worden en dat zorgde ervoor dat ik in November 2019 de domeinnaam meal.com kocht voor het astronomische bedrag van 1 miljoen dollar voor wereldwijde expansie.”

“I bought the domain name mealplanner.com and hired developers to bring my vision to life. This vision was getting bigger and bigger, which meant that in November 2019 I bought the domain name meal.com for the astronomical amount of 1 million dollars for worldwide expansion.”

I reached out to Mitchel via the Meal.com contact page, and he confirmed that he acquired the domain name last year for $1 million. He also told me the domain name was purchased with a two year payment plan. I presume the deal has not yet been paid off.

Because the Whois information is “REDACTED FOR PRIVACY” at Enom due to GDPR, I am unable to see the current registrant of the domain name. I sent an email to the registrant via Enom’s website asking about the deal, but I did not hear back. The Whois record says, “Registrant State/Province: DC,” and the only domain escrow service in Washington DC I am aware of is facilitated by IP attorney Stevan Lieberman. I reached out to ask Stevan if he is handling escrow for this domain name, and he told me he could not confirm or deny.

Although this million dollar sale is self-reported and has not been verified by an outside source, it definitely seems well within the realm of possibility for Meal.com to be a million dollar domain name.

Assuming the domain name is paid off and also assuming Ron Jackson from DNJournal and/or Michael Sumner from NameBio are able to independently confirm the sale, it could become one of the top domain name sales of 2021. In the meantime, operating the business on Meal.com is a pretty nice upgrade for the company that was founded as MealPlanner.com.

I don’t know about you, but in domain name sales negotiations, I regularly receive a reply from a prospective buyer that attempts to devalue my domain name by pointing out its flaws. “The problem is…” and then the prospect lists some of the potential issues with the domain name that, in their opinion, would reduce the value or the utility of my domain name.

How do I typically respond when someone points out some of the potential drawbacks of a domain name in my portfolio?

Quidsi was one of the most successful companies that utilized keyword .com domain names as standalone brands. The company was founded by Marc Lore, who went on to found Jet.com, and he is now CEO of Walmart’s ecommerce business operations.

Quidsi’s most well-known brand was Diapers.com, and it also operated Soap.com, Wag.com, BeautyBar.com, Casa.com, and YoYo.com. In 2010, Amazon acquired Quidsi for $545 million before shutting down Diapers.com and other brands it acquired from Quidsi in 2017.