How to Find and Register a Domain Name
Anybody can register a domain for their own use, and almost all of the desirable ones have already been registered. So, if you have one in mind for your website, the first thing you need to do is to check whether it's free.
For the generic and some country-specific domains, you can go to a website such as GoDaddy to check whether it has already been registered (there are many equivalent websites for other country-specific domains).
So, for example, if I wanted to set up a site reviewing and selling computer books, I might decide that the itbookshop.com domain would be good. But when I check this, I can see that it's only available as a “premium domain”. This means that it's already been registered by somebody else who is willing to sell it, but at a much higher price (about $1,000 in this case).
I could try another name. To help with this, if I scroll further down the page, I can see other similar domains which are available, some of which are significantly cheaper.
If you do find a domain that you're happy with, before going ahead and registering it, you should decide what you're going to do about web hosting. The reason for this is that many web hosting services offer free domain registration, so it may be more cost-effective for you to register the domain when you sign up for a hosting package.
Sometimes a domain might not show up as being for sale on a site such as this, but the owner might still be willing to sell it. If you have your heart set on a particular domain and want to pursue purchasing it, there are two options open to you: use a broker or try to do it yourself.
How to Use a Broker to Purchase a Domain
If I go to a website such as Sedo, I can enter the name of the domain I'm looking for. If it's already listed as being for sale, then after clicking on the “More Information” button, I'll see a page like this.
This tells me the price that the owner is looking for (which in this case is more than the domain was available for on GoDaddy), but it also allows me to make an offer if I think that price is too high. Finally, it also allows me to hire a broker if I don't want to handle the negotiation with the owner myself.
If the website you're looking for is not listed as being for sale, you can still hire a broker to try to negotiate a sale by selecting the “Acquire it for me” button.
There's no guarantee the owner will be willing to sell, but there is a chance, particularly if the domain is not being actively used (which you can easily check by visiting the website yourself).
How to Purchase a Domain Yourself
If you'd rather try to negotiate a purchase yourself rather than go through a broker, then the first thing to check is whether the domain is being actively used. If I go to http://www.itbookshop.com, I see the following:
In this example, there's a big “for sale” statement along with contact details at the top, so I could pursue purchasing it that way. Even if that “for sale” statement wasn't there though, I can still see that the site is not being actively used as an IT bookshop, so it still might be possible to purchase it.
If I decide to pursue this, I need to find out who to contact. In some cases there may be contact details listed on the website, but if not I can query the Whois database, which lists the owner and contact details for every domain. So, if I really wanted a particular domain, and it wasn't listed as for sale on a domain checking site, and it didn't have contact details on the site itself, I could go to http://www.whois.net, and query the database to see who owns the site, and contact them privately proposing a purchase. There's obviously no way of knowing what the response would be, but there is a chance that it would be successful.
If you are considering entering into a negotiation for the purchase of a domain, be aware that most domain owners have registered these names because they believe them to be valuable, and hope to be able to make money out of selling them. Therefore, they may well be looking for far more money than you're willing to pay. As with any negotiation, start by offering a lower amount than you're willing to pay, don't show too much enthusiasm (which will inevitably be interpreted as a willingness to pay more), and if you can't agree, make sure you leave your final offer with them so that they can come back to you later if they change their minds (which might happen when they realize you're not going to make a higher offer).
In some cases you may not be able to get details of the owner of a website from the whois database. Many web hosting services now offer a privacy service, where they list their own (i.e. the web host's) details in the whois database for domains that you register with them. In these cases, you won't be able to contact the owner directly.
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