When Chris Clark bought the domain name pizza.com in 1994, he never thought in his wildest dreams that it would fetch him 2.6 million dollars after 14 years.
Forty-three-year-old Clark maintained the site for just 20 dollars a year and has finally sold it for a whopping 2.6m dollars, after accepting an offer from an anonymous bidder after a week-long online auction.
The North Potomac, Maryland, native sounded ecstatic over his new fortune.
In an interview to the Baltimore Sun newspaper, he said: "It's crazy, it's just crazy. It will make a significant difference in my life, for sure."
Clark bought pizza.com when the world wide web started, hoping that it would help to get a contract with a pizza firm for his consulting company. Though he sold his business in 2000, he kept paying the 20 dollars annual fees for maintaining the domain, which he also used to sell advertisements.
However, the decision to sell it came in January when he heard that another domain - Vodka.com - was sold for three million dollars in 2006.
"I thought, 'Why don't I just try to see what the level of interest is?' If someone's willing to pay that much for Vodka.com, maybe there's more interest in pizza.com," he said.
On Mar 27 the online auction was launched and the first bid was 100 dollars, which skyrocketed to 2.6m dollars just a week later.
He accepted the latter offer and now Clark is expecting to get the cash in his hand after the transaction gets completed.
He said he repents not buying more domain names in the 1990s.
