Another great way to obtain a good domain that was once owned by someone else and is soon to expire is by a service known as “Domain Backorder”.
It is a service created by ICANN-authorized service providers. The procedure is as follows: once the period of registration of a domain expires, it is no longer active. There is, however a grace period of two months in which the owner has the opportunity to renew the subscription. If the owner decides not to renew, then the domain name goes through a deletion period that lasts about 5 days. After that, the domain becomes available for anyone to who desires to register it.
The objective of the backorder service is to make registration of a domain easier for you. Using the backorder service you can order a domain, that is close to its expiration date. The service registers the domain under your name as soon as it becomes available. With this service, you can often get a specific and awesome domain name for your website. The backorder service cannot guarantee you will get the domain you desire, but it gives you a really good chance at getting it registered. Domain registration is on a whoever comes first basis as there are millions of people looking for a specific domain. Almost all services use a computerized system which greatly increases your chances of registering the domain you want.
What are the best places to backorder?
The big names are NameJet, SnapNames and DropCatch.
The smaller ones are GoDaddy, DynaDot, Pheenix and Name.com
They all offer very similar services under different prices, and each service has different success rates. If you want a specific domain name, you could try back ordering in all of the servers mentioned here. After all, you would be combining different success rates and this increases your chances of getting a desired domain name. Additionally you only get charged if a domain is caught. So you will only be paying the service that actually catches the domain name for you.
Note that some companies, such as NameJet, Pheenix, SnapNames and DynaDot, that will hold private auctions if several people have back ordered a domain name. DropCatch will hold a public auction if there are several people interested and Name.com will not allow multiple backorders, so it works on a first-come, first-serve basis.
Each service has its own policy when it comes to back ordering. Some will only allow you to backorder when it is guaranteed that the original owner will not be able to renew anymore, which is the deletion process. Because the deletion process is so short, it is important to be constantly monitoring the moment when you will be able to back order to increase the probability of getting the domain.