Every day thousands of domain names expire. Some owners no longer have any use for the domain name and let it expire. There are owners who have no idea that their name has expired. Once the domain name expires it can also be referred to as a deleted domain name.

Amongst these thousands of domains are some hidden gems that can be sold for a profit or used to start your online business. The trick is finding them. As with any magic trick if you are taught the secrets you can do it too.

There really isn't any secrets to finding expired domain names. You can do a quick search and find plenty of places that offer this service. Some of the websites will charge a monthly fee for this type of service. After you have sold a few names and decide you really want to get into the domain name selling business then you can decide if a monthly service is worth the price.

Paying a monthly fee is an option if you want to speculate on domain names that will be expiring soon. You don't need to pay a service fee to search for an already expired domain name though. You can find some decent domain names that you can buy for under $9 to use for your online business or to resell for a profit.

Regardless of what you intend to do with the domain name a .com is still the preferred type to get. A .com name usually sells for more than the same name with any other extension. A short, easy to remember, 2 or 3 word domain name without any numbers or hyphens is a good starting point.

One place to begin your search is at Whois.net. Enter the keyword you want to use in your domain in the field next to Search through deleted domains and click the Go button. You will see a list of results that match your keyword. You can the click on the advanced search link below the New search section.

Doing an advanced search will allow you to enter a keyword and specify where in the domain name your keyword should be. This is great if you know you want your name to start or end with a specific word. You could do a search for all deleted domain names that start with howto by entering howto in the search box and selecting left for the Match string setting.

The only problem using this method is that you can't filter the search results to a specific domain extension. You will need to scan all the results to pick out a suitable .com domain. You can click on any of the results to see if that domain name is still available to register.

Another great place to search for expired domain names is at DomainTools.com. Click on Whois Applications and Toolbars and then click on Domain Search on the top menu.

Enter your search term or terms and click Search. The result screen will allow you to do an advanced search that has many options to narrow down the results. This is definitely a page you will want to bookmark. You can make your search so specific that it only returns expired .com domain names with no numbers or hyphens that start with howto and are a certain amount of characters long.

Once you find an expired domain name that you like you can register it at either of the sites mentioned above or at any domain register that you like. Two of my favorites are GoDaddy.com and NameCheap.com.

That is how easy it is to find an expired domain name. No secrets or hidden strings, in fact there is no magic involved whatsoever. The name you've been searching for just might be waiting for you. Now go out there, and find the perfect name for yourself!