I want to buy a domain name that someone already owns, can I do that?

Yes! Not only can you buy a domain name that already exists but you can make good money by purchasing desirable domain names and reselling them at a premium price.

I personally will not pay for services that negotiate with sellers on your behalf as I feel their loyalty is either with the seller or with the higher prices. You’ll typically see these services advertised to sellers based on maximizing their profits showing a long list of domain names that have sold for 10’s of thousands of dollars. Many of these services are commission based with incentives towards maximum profit.

There are several ways to find the contact information of a domain name owner, I highly suggest that you email them vs. calling them directly. In many cases the contact phone number goes nowhere but many owners are not interested in selling their domain names so a phone call may agitate them as they’ll see it as spam. I also don’t recommend using back ordering services from companies such as godaddy.com, it’s a complete ripoff in my mind. They collect a nominal fee from unlimited people and you may have to wait years for the domain name to expire and you have to hope that they don’t renew the name or sell it on their own.

Domain name owner information if public information and can easily be found on any free ‘Whois‘ service, Network Solutions offers a Whois service here. You will likely find several email addresses when you look up the domain name that you are interested in, chose the one that looks most appropriate or include them all if necessary and ask them politely in an email if the domain name is for sale. Another simple way to find contact information is to try go to to the Domain Name in a browser, if they have a developed web site they will usually have a contact or email link visible somewhere on the site, usually near the top or bottom of the page.

If the owner expresses interest then you can go from there but asking more information can easily turn a domain name owner off. The one piece of advise I will offer is to try to use an email address that is not associated with anything related to the domain name of interest, in many cases the seller will google your name and email address and if they think that you are affiliated with a company that needs this domain name they may increase their minimum value many times over. One way to keep sellers in line (at least some) is a reality check, ask them for usage reports for the past 24 months which show how many unique visitors come to the site as well as where they are coming from. If they don’t know how many unique visitors the site has (and in many cases it will be close to zero) they will realize that the domain may only have limited value to a limited audience which may convince them to sell to you.

I HIGHLY RECOMMEND that you use an escrow service when buying a domain name. Godaddy.com offers escrow services for transactions up to $3,000 and you can use Escrow.com for higher transactions.

I have bought and sold a few domain names, if you find this article helpful please share it. If this article wasn’t helpful or clear then please let me know if you have any questions and I will try to clarify these steps.