When a choice domain expires, it doesn't so much enter the free market as fall into a shark pool. An aggressive group of domain hunters scan lists of expiring domains and sharpen their teeth for a fight when the most attractive domain names appear. If you want a piece of the action, you need to hire the right shark and pony up whatever that shark might ask for.

You need to get an accurate read on when your domain will drop. Visiting Betterwhois or a registrar's Whois database is hopelessly inefficient for this. One of the better tools comes from enom.com pioneer Chris Ambler. His $30 program DropShark 2.5 serves up a constant list of expiring domains, giving domain prospectors plenty of inspiration as well as information. It also provides a reliable time for when the drop will happen. Once you have a domain name in your sights and a drop date on your schedule, you need to hire a shark service to get it for you.

There are three major domain drop-catchers: Pool.com, SnapNames, and eNom's Clb Drop. They all work in pretty much the same way: Customers sign up with them for expiring domains, and they bombard the master registry at VeriSign with multiple requests from a barrage of registrars. The drop-catchers play a tough game and need to be careful not to run afoul of VeriSign by mounting a virtual denial-of-service attack. But the sharks all seem to stay on VeriSign's right side, while still maintaining a competitive and aggressive edge. Naturally, with all this action at drop time, it's highly unlikely that anyone without a battery of big guns is going to slide under the crossfire and take the domain. The three big sharks have numbers in their favor, and whichever one gets the domain wins the customer.

Here's where things can get ugly for you: If there are multiple customers for a given domain, the domain shark that wins the domain for you turns around and holds an auction. The highest bidder gets the goods. And in some cases, the bidding process can be pretty intimidating. It's slightly different for each of the main players, which will affect your decision of which shark to hire. In fact, if you're really desperate to get a domain, you might want to hedge your bets and hire multiple sharks to go after it for you. There are plenty of different nuances to each process that we'll gloss over here, but for an overview, read on.