I have recently contacted someone through WhoIs, to make an offer on a domain name he currently holds. The guy has accepted my offer, but I don't know what to do next. This is going to be my first website and I currently have not taken out any web space with any hosts. Can someone please give me step by step instructions as to what to do next? Will I own the name when he sells it to me? Do I have to stick with his web host when I buy the name? How should I pay him? According to WhoIs, this guy has registered the name until Oct 06, does that mean I have to pay to renew the name again, etc, etc. Thank you in advance for any help.
you have to transfer the name to your registrar( but since it's your fist domain you may choose his registrar) he can simply push it to your account. Then you 100% own it and can host it whereever you want.
If it's a big $ amount, contact sedo.com or escrow.com and not only will they ensure everything goes smoothly, but they'll walk you through the entire process. Also, they do have tutorials on site if you want to go it alone.
Escrow.com is good, there are other services that will help too, like sedo.com. There are two basic parts to the transaction. 1. You send him the money. 2. He sends you the domain. The point of an escrow service is that they put the money into an escrow account until the domain is transferred, thus protecting you from someone who take the money and run. You should insist upon owning the domain when he sells. Nothing less than 100% total control of the domain is good for you. If he tries telling you something like that he can just put in the nameservers to your host, then that's fishy. Most domain registration services will transfer ownership of a domain from one account to another very easily. In order to do that, you'll need to know where it is registered (Godaddy, Dotster, Enom, etc), and set yourself up an account there. You'd give him the account name/number (but never the password), and he would "push" the domain into your account. At that point you would edit the domain to put your correct information (name, address, etc) on the domain and then it's yours (assuming he had legal ownership of the domain in the first place). Hope that helps. Peter