I need to get my hands on some already registered domains?!?

[cewe]

Hi Guys & Gals,

There are a couple of already registered domains i'd like to get my hands on, but i'm coming up against a brick wall.

I have already tried contacting the domain owners directly if there contact info is available through whois and tried using a domain brokerage service from the likes of SEDO to try and acquire the domain on my behalf...but they seem to only work they have solid whois contact info to use.

My problem is that where do I turn now after the above routes failing? Are there any good domain brokerage services you are aware off or any other approach I could try to aquire such domains??

Thanks

James

[JasonJackson]

Without accurate WHOIS info you face a big problem.  I have had success tracking those people down (but i had to WORK for it). These ideas are geared towards inaccurate and not private registration (save the first one which applies to both):

1. You can place a backorder and wait until the domain expires to snatch it up.  Google how to do this effectively because you aren't the only one who is after that domain.

2.  Search for the whois email in the search engines to see if you can find any sites that have that email on them.  Go through each site and do some investigating and you might get lucky by finding their profile somewhere.  Use any alternate forms of contact you find.  Repeat this step with each form of contact that you find.

3.  Use location information from the whois and whatever names they have there and look up old phone records. i.e. If they gave you st. paul, alberta canada and only part of their name you would find the phonebook (call the local phone companies in the area...they sometimes have old ones that they are happy to mail) that was published just after the domain was registered and go down the list calling each potential match.  This works if they typed their phone number wrong.

4.  Go to the domain you are after and have a look at the website.  If it is a standard template looking thing then you can run some of the words on the page through copyscape.com and see any other domains he has registered.  Also try googling those phrases as well.  This one is hit or miss.

5.  Submit a whois complaint: http://wdprs.internic.net/

Hope this helps!

Jason Jackson

[SteveOllington]

There are brokerage services yes, but you'll find you have to sign up to them and then you'll start getting a lot of spam emails (at least that's what happened to me). Your ISP should have some kind of a domain watcher service to let you know when domains become available. But you should know that domains don't necessarily keep their value when they switch ownership... if the whois info changes along with the content then it might lose any age based benefit that it did have in the eyes of Google. You might be better of just going with a whole brand new domain, just including a hyphen in there or something... will be a lot cheaper to purchase too!