A domain I want will expire soon, what is the best way to obtain it?

DigiData

A domain I want will expire soon, what is the best way to obtain it? It is registered at publicdomainregistry and will expire very soon. currently the domain doesn't lead to any website (probably not is use?)

what is the best course of action I can do to buy it? from what I found so far, I can:

Try contacting the domain owner. However, the whois details said "GDR masked"
Try Godaddy domain broker
Try a " Backorder" service by a local domain register to apply a request registering the domain as soon as the domain expires
ANY OTHER OPTIONS?

MonstaHost

I like this article for that: https://mikeindustries.com/blog/archive/2005/03/how-to-snatch-an-expiring-domain

To quote them:

_Domains are available to the general public 75 days after they expire, how do you know your GoDaddy backorder isn’t one of many other backorders from other people using other services? The answer is, you don’t.
And thus begins the cloak-and-dagger game of “getting in on The Drop”.
“The Drop” is the unpredictable three hour period of time in which the domain is deleted from VeriSign’s database and released back into the ecosystem.
I briefly thought about trying to beat GoDaddy to the punch by manually registering my domain during the drop process, but I quickly found out that there are no fewer than three major services which specialize in pounding away on VeriSign’s servers during the drop period. With their considerable resources and my measly Powerbook, there was no way I could compete on their level.
So I decided to enlist the services of all three major domain snatching firms in hopes that a) one would grab my domain for me, and b) no one else would be competing against me.

The three services — Snapnames.com, Enom.com, and Pool.com — all operate in a similar manner. They use a network of registrars to hit the Verisign servers at frequent intervals (but not too frequent to get banned) and snatch as many requested names as possible. If you don’t get your name, you don’t pay. But that’s where the three services begin to differ._

abytecurious

Don't you still have to pay a fee (small though) for them to try?

cloudmate

The only way which is gonna work is "BACKORDER". I literally have 97% success rate on them once the domain expires.