First off, the background:  I eventually want to start my own business.  I have a couple of products already in mind, but not the technical skill to make them come alive yet.  I plan on using the GI Bill when I leave active duty (soon) to gain those skills.  Please excuse my vagueness when speaking about this, but I'm always paranoid about my ideas getting snatched up.

I have a theme / mission in mind, a moto, and a name for the business, which all ties together.  The issue is, the domain name I want to buy for it is taken.  It's only five letters long and a .com, which makes it somewhat more desirable on the domain name market, even though it doesn't spell a dictionary word or anything close to one.

The website that is currently using it looks like it's from the late 90s.  I'm not really sure if the owner is serious about keeping it.  It looks like a small motorcycle club for vets.  It expires in 6 weeks, and was first registered by the current owner two years ago.

Here are my options, as I see them.  I'm really not sure which to go with.  

1 - Sign up and pay for a reservation to take the domain name when it expires, hoping the owner doesn't renew.

2 - Offer the owner some money for it (.org is available) before he renews, but possibly sparking his attention in the process and causing him to renew.

3 - Just going with a different domain extension, like .net or .us.

Wait for it to expire first, you have nothing to lose.  If that doesn't work, then offer him money.   If your idea is that good, then a few thousand bucks is nothing to acquire your desired domain name.

I really lucked out.

I got a 5 character catchy & relevant .com domain for $13 and change this week.

I sold a domain I bought a few months ago for 2.99 (.com at godaddy) for 2,000.00 this week! The buyer contacted me...

I blew it all on 100 of AG.

Nice!!

I have one I was going to set up for unlocking cell phones but never did anything with it.

cellphoneunlocking.net

Any ideas what I could get for it? Seems kinda catchy and is relevant to someone I'm sure.

What site to sell it at?

Only worth what someone will pay for it. You could auction on GoDaddy. Net domains don't bring much.

Do you mean dot net domains, or domain names in general?

Cuz I know a guy that picked up two grand recently

I mean '.net'.

While not absolute, most company's want '.com' for their domain and have the '.net' only to forward to their primary '.com'.

My sale was purely luck. I didn't even do it to domain squat. I picked up the domain for a stupid Harvard CS50/CS75 project. But going to the GoDaddy domain auctions give you a clue for what you can get. But it is important to note just because someone has it listed for a price doesn't mean it will sell at that price. I looked at the ones with multiple bids to guess an appropriate counter-offer. I didn't want to be too greedy and wanted it to be cheaper than a lawyer so they wouldn't try to sue me for any potential trademark violations.