The domain you need is taken, but the site on it has not worked or been updated for a long time? You can buy it. Statistics show that 70% of owners of dormant domains are ready to sell when the offer is right.

Step 1: Find the owner's contact

Search through WHOIS:

whois example.com

If the data is hidden behind Privacy Protection, write to the registrant email or use the contact form provided by the registry. Also try:

The contact form on the site itself
A LinkedIn/Twitter account (sometimes listed in the WHOIS email)
The DomainTools service — it sometimes shows the unprotected history

Step 2: Negotiation strategy

Do not reveal your business goal — once the seller learns why you need the domain, the price will go up
Make the first offer below your budget — leave room to bargain
Be patient — the answer may arrive a week later
Offer a quick deal — payment today through escrow often works

Platforms for a safe transaction (Escrow)

Service	Fee	Details
Escrow.com	0.89–3.25%	The largest one, an official ICANN partner
Dan.com	Free	Marketplace + escrow
Sedo.com	10–15%	The largest domain marketplace
Afternic	20%	Integrated with GoDaddy

How escrow works when buying a domain

The buyer deposits the money into the escrow service account
The seller transfers the domain to the buyer's account
The buyer confirms receipt
The escrow service releases the money to the seller

⚠️ Never transfer money directly! Only through an escrow service. Scammers often offer a "discount for a direct transfer" — that is a standard fraud scheme.

💡 If the domain is not for sale: Consider the alternatives — a similar domain in another zone (.net, .com.ua), a domain with a small change (add a word), or wait 1–2 years — many domains are eventually released.

Typical Seller Responses and How to React

Seller's response	What it means	How to react
"The domain is not for sale"	Often a template reply, not a final decision — especially if the domain is clearly unused	Leave the offer open and return with a question in 3-6 months
"How much are you willing to pay?"	The seller is passing the first move to you to gauge the upper limit	Name a specific figure below your real budget, not a vague range
Silence for more than 2 weeks	The email may have landed in spam, or the seller does not check the address listed in WHOIS regularly	Repeat the message through another channel — a site contact form or social media, if you can find one
An asking price 50-100 times the registration cost	A typical opening position for domains with traffic or short names	Ask the seller for metrics (Ahrefs DR, traffic) to back up the price, and negotiate from those facts

Estimating a Fair Price

Before naming a figure, it helps to know the rough order of a domain's value from objective metrics rather than the seller's intuition alone.

# Check the domain's age (an indirect value factor)
whois example.com | grep -i "creation date"

# Check historical indexing and traffic through the archive
# web.archive.org/web/*/example.com

Short domains (one or two words, up to 8-10 characters) in popular zones (.com, .ua) cost an order of magnitude more than compound names even with no traffic — the brevity itself is an asset. For domains with real organic traffic, a fair price is usually calculated as 12-24 months of the revenue that traffic generates.

Legal Checks Before the Deal

Does the name in WHOIS match the person negotiating — the seller must be the registered owner or hold a power of attorney
Is there a trademark registered by a third party that matches the domain — buying such a domain creates a UDRP claim risk for the new owner as well
Is the domain under lien or in a dispute — check public UDRP decision databases for the domain
Does the domain's zone belong to a jurisdiction that requires extra documents on an ownership change (some ccTLDs require a local legal entity, for example)

When Buying Makes No Sense

The owner is asking a price many times over the domain's real value, with no metrics to back up traffic or brand recognition
An active, regularly updated site with a real business is running on the domain — the odds of a sale approach zero regardless of the offer
An equally good alternative exists in another zone or with a minimal name change, available for direct registration
The seller insists on a direct payment, with no escrow — that is a fraud red flag, not just an inconvenience

Once the deal closes, the domain still needs to be moved to your own registrar — the procedure is covered in domain transfer.

The average negotiation cycle for buying a taken domain runs from two weeks to a few months — rushing the final offer is usually counterproductive, and cutting off contact after the first refusal is a mistake too. A good share of deals close on the second or third approach, once the owner's circumstances have had time to change.