Do a whois query and email the owner directly. For low amount offers going through a broker is definitely the wrong approach in my opinion.

GoDaddy has a free monitoring service [1] where you add the domain(s) you are interested in and it will email you each time that domain WHOIS data is updated. This is very useful to get notified when a domain name is about to expire and then get deleted (redemptionPeriod, pendingDelete). Over a 5+ year time period, quite a few domain names I was monitoring were eventually dropped by their previous owners. These weren't highly sought after, but your local insignificant city .com, some rather unique first/last name...these type of domain names.

[1] https://www.godaddy.com/help/setting-up-domain-monitoring-57... (not affiliated with GoDaddy; not even using them as a registrar, but this tool proved useful for me)

> GoDaddy has a free monitoring service [1] ...

Does anyone other than GoDaddy have such a service? I would use this, but wouldn't trust GoDaddy not to steal the domain out from under me and then try to extort me for money. (Or just be obnoxious and try to advertise to me left and right.)

> Does anyone other than GoDaddy have such a service?

I've been using DomainTools's monitoring service [1] for years. I wouldn't trust GoDaddy with anything domain-related either.

[1] https://research.domaintools.com/monitor/domain-monitor/

GoDaddy have been caught doing some dodgy things in the past. Like taking your money for brokerage and not doing any work afterwards. Or registering domains and parking them if lot of people search for them e.g. via who is or the registration form.

Hopefully they've turned it around and actually working on useful services nowadays...

Most data in WHOIS is a dead end. Try looking up a few sites, apparently everyone lives in Panama now.

Gandi at least actually forwards these emails, I tested it with my own domains recently. But generally you're probably right...

I had a six letter dotcom name back in the mid-2000s I sold for $10k to an Irish company. At the time it was a lot of money and I paid off what was left of my student loans. I then dumped what was left and my savings into my car loan and was totally debt free ... then I lost my job

The website on it had a ton of content too, which I never re-hosted anywhere else. Part of me wishes I had just hung on to it. milk.com is another one of those old holdouts where they guy is unwilling to sell it for less than 7 figures.

The person sitting on milk.com should definitely hold out. That's a multi-million dollar domain for the lobby & media obsessed milk industry. I'm surprised they haven't long since acquired it.

Actually he wants minimum 8 figures.

https://milk.com/value/

Dan's emails and milk-related content are also pretty interesting: https://milk.com/experiments/