Yesterday we published an article that stated the largest amount of Australian domain names were dropping in a single day, around 3650 “Direct .au” names dropped. There were also around 1050 “.com.au” domains dropping on that same day which means around 4700 Australian domain names dropped in a single day.
For reasons unknown, auDA continue to allow one single private company to run the daily domain name drop auctions. You can find out more about this by reading these articles. auDA have not allowed any new Registrars to compete in the Australian Domain Name space since 2016, although many professional and experienced people and companies have spent time and money trying.
The data from yesterday’s drop auctions is very interesting.
Out of the 3650 “Direct .au” domains that dropped, 94 were re-purchased. This means about 2.6% were re-registered. Which means 97% of the 3650 Direct .au domains were deemed as a waste of money by the original owners.
But what’s REALLY interesting is…
One single person purchased 43 of the 94.
That person’s name is Ryan Story from Formula Digital.
This means Ryan Story purchased around 46% of all the dropping “Direct .au” domains for himself.
100% of all the domains Ryan Story purchased have their nameservers pointed to Above.com(.)
This is the list of domains Ryan Story purchased yesterday; (all point to parking platform Above.com)
12apostles.au – $25 Ryan Story
affiliatewebsites.au – $25 Ryan Story
allphones.au – $100 Ryan Story
anordinarystory.au – $25 Ryan Story
artichoke.au – $25 Ryan Story
babel.au – $25 Ryan Story
bandaid.com.au – $25 Ryan Story
bonza.au – $250 Ryan Story
caravansdirect.au – $25 Ryan Story
covercraft.au – $25 Ryan Story
culturalstandards.au – $25 Ryan Story
dailygrowth.au – $25 Ryan Story
deliveryguy.com.au – $25 Ryan Story
deploy.au – $500 Ryan Story
domainguys.com.au – $25 Ryan Story
enviroguard.au – $25 Ryan Story
exponentialgrowth.au – $25 Ryan Story
fergusson.au – $25 Ryan Story
flatbedprinting.com.au – $25 Ryan Story
kaizen.au – $100 Ryan Story
lightspeed.au – $100 Ryan Story
localorigins.au – $25 Ryan Story
murdermystery.au – $25 Ryan Story
onlinedelivery.au – $25 Ryan Story
orston.au – $25 Ryan Story
ozexports.au – $25 Ryan Story
ozexports.com.au – $25 Ryan Story
paranormal.au – $25 Ryan Story
pious.au – $25 Ryan Story
pizzapal.com.au – $25 Ryan Story
plenum.au – $25 Ryan Story
potplant.com.au – $250 Ryan Story
precisionbuilt.au – $25 Ryan Story
pricematch.au – $25 Ryan Story
primitivehabits.com.au – $25 Ryan Story
priscilla.au – $25 Ryan Story
privacyhub.au – $25 Ryan Story
pureaustralia.au – $25 Ryan Story
realestategroup.au – $25 Ryan Story
recipekit.au – $25 Ryan Story
roastme.au – $25 Ryan Story
roastme.com.au – $25 Ryan Story
rounded.au – $25 Ryan Story
royalexpress.au – $25 Ryan Story
schnauzer.au – $25 Ryan Story
scorpius.au – $25 Ryan Story
secretroom.com.au – $25 Ryan Story
serverspares.au – $25 Ryan Story
skycast.au – $25 Ryan Story
sloth.au – $25 Ryan Story
solarpro.au – $25 Ryan Story
southhub.com.au – $25 Ryan Story
sportmates.au – $25 Ryan Story
sportmates.com.au – $25 Ryan Story
thequiz.com.au – $25 Ryan Story
whistleblower.au – $1,000 Ryan Story
Ryan save your money.
You will never sell these or make back the initial, admin or ongoing costs from small no chance monetisation revenue with Above.com
Ryan has purchased more than 400 domains in the last 5 months from the drops.
I think that it is more about traffic monetisation?
In my humble opinion, whistleblower.au might be the only one that has some potential. It’s probably a great case study on what I predicted yesterday – the profit made on the 2% of domains that have a market (1 domain above) will barely cover the holding cost of the other 98% (42 of the above 43). But hey, that’s just the opinion of one person. 🙂
It seems very odd that the Chairman of the Shell racing team in Australia is the most frequent purchaser of (thousands) of dropped domains in Australia, doesn’t it? Could they be doing this on someone else’s behalf?
Should probably be looked at more closely.
Good question. Another question would be, has GST been paid on all these domain names over the past few years for various entities coming out of nowhere and buying BULK?
Remember SEO Web Recovery, ASSA, Guzzini, and now Formula Digital… They all came out of nowhere over the past 2 years, bought a few thousand domains, and then vanished? I wonder how one would go about getting the GST payments checked for each of these entities to make sure everything is above board? Which I’m sure it is, right?
Do auDA perform audits like this at any time?
And I wonder why every single domain for these entities had their nameservers pointed to the same parking monetisation company? Call me silly, but I just can’t quite figure it out? They didn’t think of using a different domain parking provider? They all used the same one? Hmmm, so strange.
I’m not suggesting anything untoward is occurring, nothing really comes to mind, but it’s always best to look into strange events like the ones mentioned above for the interest of stability, fairness and transparency in any industry, isn’t it?
Yeah, remember Dane from ASSA last year, coming out of nowhere, buying up 63% of all dropped domains during July? He registered 2616 domains on behalf of Advanced Safety Systems Australia during the single month of July. Then after this article, he vanished and stopped buying domain names… Where have you gone Dane?
Gee, how strange?
Now we have Ryan Story from Formula Digital buying thousands of domains and pointing them to one particular domain parking company… I wonder how long he’ll be around? He must be paying a lot of GST on all these domain names he’s purchasing… I hope he’s making a lot of money from domain parking!
Spoke to Ryan who said he doesn’t know anything about these recent registrations..
The plot thickens
UBU ?
This can’t be true, surely? Does anyone else know Ryan Story who isn’t posting as anonymous?
At this point, I don’t believe the above.
If you really spoke with Ryan, could please get Ryan to get in touch with us, would be good to get the record straight.