You’re starting a new business, launching a new product, or initiating a new ad campaign, and looking for that killer domain name.

Unfortunately, given that there are literally hundreds of millions of domains registered, you find that yours is already taken. Give up hope? No way. The fact of the matter is that millions of domain names expire every year. You may be able to nab an expiring domain name at a very low cost.

First, do some research. Whois.com gives you all the info you need to know. This includes the registrar, expiration date and, for domains that are not private, contact info for the folks who are responsible for the domain.

The expiration date is the key. If it is upcoming, say, less than three months out, chances are good that it will not be renewed.

This is because most registrars bombard their customers with notices that the domain is going to expire. So if the domain name hasn’t been renewed, it’s probably not very important to the folks who registered it.

Note that the expiration date is not truly the date that the domain is taken away from the registrant. Registrars typically provide about three weeks to renew an expired domain name at no additional cost, and then at least another week when the registrant can renew with an additional fee. The net of all of this is that you have about a four-month period when the time is ripe to go after an expiring domain name.

Although we would like to think that the fair and equitable solution would be that any individual could register an expired domain upon its release, there are only a handful of companies that end up acquiring expired domain names. These "backordering services" include industry titans godaddy.com, web.com (under its subsidiary snapnames.com), and others such as enom.com and pool.com. They grab expired domain names, and then try to sell them on the open market, sometimes via auction. If the domain name doesn’t sell, it is eventually released back into the wild.

Your best bet is to go with the backordering service most closely affiliated with the registrar of the domain name. Web.com, for example, owns networksolutions.com, so if that is the registrar go with them. If it is a smaller registrar, or even one in a foreign country, you should check with the registrar first on what their auctioning policies are.

The minimum you are going to pay is about $60 (on top of standard registration fees), if no one else wants the domain name. If the domain name is popular, it will go to auction and the market will decide its eventual price.

Alternatively, if the domain is not registered as private, consider contacting the registrant of the domain name and making them an offer.

They can simply renew the domain name and then transfer it to you.

While this is the easiest way to get an expiring domain name, consider that this may backfire, tipping off the owner that someone wants their domain name when they might have just let it expire.

John Agsalud is an IT expert with more than 25 years of information technology experience in Hawaii and around the world. Reach him at johnagsalud@yahoo.com.