Hopefully this article helps you in your own quest for a domain that may be expiring. My best advice is that if your interest in a domain name is only lukewarm, go ahead and use a basic service like GoDaddy, but if you really don’t want to let one get away, you must enlist the services of the big three: Snapnames, Enom, and Pool. It’s anybody’s guess what the final price will be, but by getting all the best agents out there working for you, you ensure at least being in the game.

UPDATE: Both Mason Cole of Snapnames and Chris Ambler of Enom have written in to clarify a few points which I’d like to post here –
Snapnames has an exclusive partnership with Network Solutions which allows them first shot at any and all expiring domains that are currently held by Network Solutions. The domain I got was not held by Network Solutions but a great many are. If yours is, Snapnames is your best bet. You’ll still have to bid against any others who may be after the same domain, but the auction process at Snapnames is pretty fair and straightforward. If you are the only bidder, it will cost you a flat fee of $60. Not bad.
Snapnames is actually not technically a newcomer to the game, but their exclusive deal with Network Solutions is fairly new and it is that which has made them a powerhouse.
According to Chris at Enom, some less than savory registrars have been known to actually cut the initial 40 day grace period down manually with the intent of repossessing the domain for resale. While this is technically against ICANN guidelines, ICANN has a hard time enforcing its rules on registrars, so just beware when watching for a domain that it may enter the redemption period quicker than you expect. It’s rare, but it can happen, especially with a non-established registrar. This could shrink the 75-day window down to potentially 35 days, and it could also screw you out of your own domain should it expire on you.
Chris also confirmed my suspicion that manually trying to snag a domain during the drop is all but impossible if any professional drop catchers are going after it. Enom, Pool, and others have many orders of magnitude times the amount of resources that private citizens have so it’s not even worth trying unless you’re going after an uncontested domain.
There is a very sticky issue going on right now with regards to how names drop. Verisign proposed a Waiting List Service a little while ago that basically let you sign up on a waiting list for all expiring domains. It was a flat-rate, first-come-first-serve service where the fees were reasonable but Verisign controlled the whole thing. This would based eliminate The Drop entirely. Companies filed lawsuits and the thing never happened. So basically, registrars got proactive and amended their agreements so that when your domain expires, they can repossess it themselves or sell it as their own. This is what allows Network Solutions, GoDaddy, Tucows, and others to repossess their own domains and use their own services (like Snapnames) to auction them off. An argument can be made that by eliminating the ICANN-mandated redemption grace period, these companies are in violation of their ICANN agreements, but thus far ICANN has been reluctant to take action. It appears ICANN is generally very slow at taking action with anything, so it looks like this sort of practice may become a de-facto standard. The moral of the story is that you should always look to see what registrar the domain you’re after is under and see if they offer exclusive backorder rights to it. Network Solutions does, GoDaddy does, Tucows is starting to, and others may follow suit.


Read more: http://www.mikeindustries.com/blog/archive/2005/03/how-to-snatch-an-expiring-domain#ixzz0jScVnHPM