A man from North Potomac, Maryland made a goldmine out of the domain name he had been maintaining since 1994 for $20 a year after the web address sold for $2.6 million in an online site that auctions domains.

Chris Clark’s pizza.com received the highest bid from an anonymous bidder when the auction closed Thursday. The bidding ran for a week.

Clark, 42, registered the domain name in 1994 when the World Wide Web was just starting with the hope of snaring a contract with a pizza company for his consulting firm. He sold his business in 2000 but kept paying the $20 annual maintenance fee for the web address and used it to get advertisements.

He and a friend turned the site into a pizza directory one year ago that earned them over $5,000 before deciding to sell the name online in January. Clark was inspired by the online sale of the vodka.com for $3 million in Sedo, so he placed pizza.com in the international online auction site.

From $100 on the first day, the bid for domain name jumped to $1 million the following day on March 28.

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