rct

Telling stories is such an important aspect of marketing, but overlooked by many. A good book recommendation is "Make it Stick", by Dan Heath.

what's the best way to pitch a writer like yourself? Does email work, or do you prefer twitter?

Use http://www.segment.io for your analytics. You insert only one script into your site and the service lets you use up to 30 different analytic providers. Many of these services provide the first 30 days for free, so try as many as you like and see which ones you like best.

I saw you got press in TechCrunch today, congrats!

That's an awesome app! How is the marketing going? Because I think this could be a really big hit.

lol, yeah it's a bit hard to read. I thought about writing it out as: Car Incentives.com

This is an MVP. Just getting started, dealers want to see interest before they will offer a paid test-drive.

That's kind of the idea. These leads would be very high quality, since consumers would actually have to visit the dealership. My target for the leads is primarily the manufacturers, not the dealers - but both are interested.

Hi, I've been researching the car buying space for several years and started the site RealCarTips.com. Here's my take on this:

There's currently a site called RollSale (http://rollsale.com) that's doing something similar to this.

There's also AutoTrade.com Trade-In Marketplace where you can get quotes for your trade-in (https://tradein.autotrader.com)

But the problem I see with this business model is that any quote you get from a dealer for a vehicle they haven't personally seen and inspected will not be a reliable bid.

They can always do a bait and switch after you bring the vehicle in. Now that they have you at the dealership, they can wear you down and convince you to drop the price due to "unforseen" issues. Perhaps the vehicle is not in the condition they expected, or there's some mechanical "issues" and they can't honor their original bid.

I don't know of any dealers that will absolutely guarantee a used car bid sight unseen (unless they bid way below market rate), which isn't good for consumers.

Not saying this business model won't work, it's just hard to get guaranteed bids.

Edit: I may have misunderstood the question, but I'm assuming this is a service where you try to sell or "unload" your car to a dealer.

SEEKING FREELANCER - SF Bay Area

Looking for a freelancer in the SF Bay Area for an iOS app project. This is a paid job, but I'm looking for someone who is open to partnering with me on future projects.

I'm also looking for Python or Ruby developers for a project I'd like to start in 2013.

I have a long track record of successful web projects. Currently the "poster child" for Google Adsense (picture of me on their home page: http://www.google.com/adsense

Please get in touch at: gregg@realcartips.com

Sure, taking that out of context makes it look like a typical craigslist ad, I agree. But I think I gave enough reasons why this isn't just a typical idea coming from a random business guy. Besides, I will of course reveal what the idea is once I meet prospective cofounders in person.

tldr: I'm a car buying expert with a long and successful track record. Looking for a couple of technical cofounders in the SF Bay Area. If you're interested, I'd love to meet for a beer or coffee. Contact me at: gregg@realcartips.com

Thanks!

Autotrader.com and Cars.com are the two biggest players, and yes, most dealerships use at least one to list their inventory. However, many car shoppers do search individual dealer's web sites for inventory and find that it sucks.

In addition, I've found many cases where the latest inventory is not listed on Autotrader or Cars.com (and even on the dealer's own site). The only way to know for sure what the dealer has on the lot is to actually visit them in person or contact them via phone or email so they can check their internal system.

It's because there are only a few DMS (dealer management system) providers that most dealers sign up and stick with. They manage not only their web site, but a lot of back-end systems as well. These systems, like you pointed out, don't do a very good job with the web site, but that's only a small part of what they offer as a package.

Since most dealers aren't very technical, they just stick with what they get and leave it to the so-called "professionals" to handle the web site.

There's always room for disruption, but it's going to be more difficult than simply calling up dealers and telling them you can create a better web site.

BTW, since you're looking at buying a new car, check out my site: http://www.realcartips.com

This may backfire on dealers. Most consumers don't understand why buying a car is such a hassle. It's mainly due to the out-dated dealer franchise system. Dealers are going to fight this tooth and nail, we'll see if consumers take notice.

I run the site by myself, self-taught HTML/CSS with a little bit of jQuery. If you guys have any car buying questions, I'd be glad to answer them.