Automotive Affiliate Revenue

Recent comments on a post at my business blog caused me work all weekend developing a step by step plan to give to car dealers on how to protect their biggest online asset, their name.  There are a few sites that try to extract payment for car dealers to control listings of their business but the problem with these car dealer directories attempt to cannibalize traffic on dealers name search to push lead generation, adsense clicks and ebay affiliate sales.

Also have a few sites like this too, but they are basically ways for dealers to protect their names and to push links back to the dealers sites.  A good example of this is Automotive Nexus – You link to local car dealers.  We will use sites like this to improve the automotive seo of a dealers sites while monetizing traffic for other search terms.  However, we do not attempt to extort money from dealers to control their name there.  We just link back to their sites and give it to them.

Directories can be useful for getting a new site indexed and for some brand protection.  You just need to understand the purpose of these sites is not to help dealers or to provide a resource for online users, their individual monetization is their primary goal.  All websites have a purpose and most are for the money.  That is the only reason I have them to drive revenue.

Revenue in the automotive niche is ok for a website’s purpose but you need to understand where a dealership listing really falls into the equation.