Best Way To Get Expiring Domain

A domain I want seems to have been abandoned and it about to expire. How do I go about trying to grab it without paying the extra charge of having some tool monitor it for me? If it expires on Apr 2, does it expire on Apr 2 midnight GMT? Anyone have any suggestions? Thanks.

Domains are generally placed in a locked status by the registrar after the expiration date for up to 2 months and even perhaps longer. After that, they get released so that people like you can register them. When it's released, you are off to the races trying to get the domain first.

These dumb domain hording companies like to buy up domains that have expired and put up junk directories to sell off search results ads. You may need to employ a monitoring service to get the domain.

The domain I was trying to get has been renewed - though I don't know why, as when you try to access it nothing happens. It isn't hooked up to anything, hasn't been for at least a year. It's too bad squatting isn't illegal as there are some great domains out there just pretending to be in use or with BUY ME signs on them. I finally chose a domain that was available. Thanks for the reply.

Domain names aren't just used for holding websites.

The owner may have been running some other service on it?

I suppose you could be right, I never asked. I just got excited when I saw it was ready to expire It's really hard finding decent domain names these days. I wanted a .COM and not one of the other ones. End result: I found one I liked and bought it for 2 years, all's well that ends well.
Thanks again.

moreover the domain might be on auto renewal and even if the owner forgot about the domain it would be renewed.

This is so hard to find a good valid domain nowadays. It seems all the names I'd buy are already in use. I still couldn't believe when I found 5 chars domain in .com and it was available.

Sometimes a domain looks like it has been re-registered, but then 5 days later it says pending renewal or deletion on the WHOIS data, and then it is actually about to be dropped.

That's actually a trick that some registrars are using ... they'll "register" the domain (which costs them about a buck), throw some advertising on it for a few days, then undo the registration with ICANN and get their $1 back.

Definitely not "right" but there's not alot one can d about it either.

David68 - Have you tried doing a "whois" search on that first domain and contacting the current owner. You might be able to buy it off them. I have to do this pretty often for clients. Prices usually range from a couple hundred dollars to a couple thousand.

Yes, I did a whois. No, I didn't try to contact them. They probably use it for something other than port 80 hosting, but I should probably contact them just for not at least having the decency to put up a "no, not interesting in selling" parking page LOL It's not a domain worth paying extra for, to me anyway, it's more of a cool name than a profitable one. They've had it for 9 years now so they must like/use it.

Other reasons to have a domain name other than website use:
1) email
2) ftp
3) gaming
4) squatting/annoying people

Probably many more

learn from it

Sometimes a domain looks like it has been re-registered,in fact it is not!