What is the deal with this website?

[Total Auto Network]

7 hours ago, Zed Head said:

To be clear, you're not the owner of THIS site (the ClassicZcars site), you're the owner of this site - http://240zforsale.com/about-us/ the topic of the thread.

I did a double-take when I saw your first sentence.  Thought maybe we'd finally worn Mike out.

Somebody already called you, in Post #4 and #6, and wasn't very pleased.  Why don't you address those posts directly?  He is a very trusted member here.  You won't go far until you do.

Good luck.

 

Thought that was clear, but yep I'm the owner of 240zforsale.com among some other Datsun car sites.

And as far as siteunseen's posts I think there is some confusion.  I've never talked to him.  Def not on the phone.  I think he has me confused with someone else or someone else's site.  If I'm wrong he is welcome to post the email conversation in this thread and we can figure out what the problem is.   Or he can call me.  I'd love to clear it up with him because he def has a poor opinion of me and my site, and I am totally oblivious to what he is talking about.  Not trying to be rude, but I honestly think he has me mixed up with someone else.

As I stated I don't have multiple numbers, I dont ask for a down payment.  I dont scam.  In fact I dont even know how I would scam because I am just curating content.  My site is just an aggregator and the direct submission method just allows me to better keep the ads updated.

PS.  I also don't pick pockets on Bourbon street 

[siteunseen]

I received an email via craigslist reply function the other day, the third person demanding a phone conversation claiming to be "a cash buyer".  My reply mentioned classiczcars.com.  Now you show up claiming to be a Datsun enthusiast with multiple web sites for the purpose of "I want to get a living database going so in the future buyers / sellers have sort of a fair market value calculator to go off of.  Its also a little slice of history and just fun to look at for build ideas, etc."  You joined our club yesterday claiming you "just saw this thread".  

Everything on your site is copied from zhome.com.  You don't have permission from Mr Beck.  Do yourself a favor and stop posting.

My site is just an aggregator and the direct submission method just allows me to better keep the ads updated.

Out.

 

[Total Auto Network]

15 minutes ago, siteunseen said:

I received an email via craigslist reply function the other day, the third person demanding a phone conversation claiming to be "a cash buyer".  My reply mentioned classiczcars.com.  Now you show up claiming to be a Datsun enthusiast with multiple web sites for the purpose of "I want to get a living database going so in the future buyers / sellers have sort of a fair market value calculator to go off of.  Its also a little slice of history and just fun to look at for build ideas, etc."  You joined our club yesterday claiming you "just saw this thread".  

Everything on your site is copied from zhome.com.  You don't have permission from Mr Beck.  Do yourself a favor and stop posting.

My site is just an aggregator and the direct submission method just allows me to better keep the ads updated.

Out.

 

3

Oh ok that makes sense.  You have me mixed up with one of those 3rd party companies that contacts people via Craigslist looking to do escrow or whatever.  That's not me, and yes those are super sketchy.

I know its hard to tell tone in text, so I'll let you know I'm trying to be combative at all.  And yes I did just join yesterday because I saw that people were posting about my site without the whole picture.  That is why I opened up the book and told you guys everything.  Posted me personal cell, etc.  I'm not one of those hide behind my keyboard warriors.

siteunseen, I'm also not trying to come out you.  I am only addressing your comments because Zed asked me too.  Honestly man if you think I'm trying to scam or whatever just call me today or direct message me on this forum I'm sure we can clear up this misunderstanding as opposed to going back and forth in a thread.

And and just to be certain I cover everything you said here, I didn't copy anything from Zhome.com.  I've actually never been to that site before.  But I will check it out now.  The only exception would be if I grabbed one of his pics via Google images.  And if that is the case, and he has a problem with it, I can take it down and replace with something else.

[Zed Head]

Let me see if I can do some mediating/moderating/arbitrating.

Apparently siteunseen used the site to try and get his craigslist ad listed. He gave his email address.  Whoever he was dealing with would not post the CL ad unless he got a phone number.  siteunseen did not want to give his phone number and thought the deal was dead.  Subsequently siteunseen has received phone calls from irritating people and thinks that they came through the 240zforsale site.  

Total Auto Network AKA 240Zforsale, to be known henceforth as TAN, is just pulling content from the internet to build a web site.  It's unclear who siteunseen was talking to or if it's connected to TAN.  But the coincidence is suspicious to siteunseen.

Note to TAN - this site, the CZCC site is where we "chat about zcars".  If we call your number and it's not blocked then you can add it to a list and sell it to telemarketers.  That's not good.  If you get our email address you can sell it to internet marketers also.  Not good.

The problem here is that you probably have many internet aggregation sites, making a few dollars a day on each one, not just Datsun Z cars.  It's one of today's industries.  So you may or may not be a true enthusiast.  That's where the Bourbon Street comparison comes from, I think.  Nobody knows you and you just have a bunch of copied information on a web site.  And the one guy that's interacted with the site came away annoyed.  So, as a businessperson you need to work on customer interaction quality.  It appears to be lacking.  Why would anyone call a stranger to chat about Z cars?  Make the web site easy to use and clear about what comes from it.  What can the customer expect?  

If you're truly a Z car enthusiast, offer some knowledge in a few of the active threads.  Tell us about your other aggregation sites before we find out.  Tell us about things like your Twitter account.  Put all of your web site addresses on your Twitter account.  So we know everything.  The internet is full of cons and you're just a new unknown face.  You have to prove yourself.  If you don't know squat about Z cars, or Datsuns, just say so.

https://twitter.com/totalautonet

The site looks like it might be interesting to certain people. Not much use though if you're not close to CA, FL, GA, or TX.

 

[Zed Head]

Another thought - 

Maybe siteunseen missed the part on the contact form about sharing., and TAN shared the data with the "cash buyer".  If so, that's on TAN.  

Additional information collected, tracked and stored via an SQL database includes messages, comments our other data directly submitted through this site.

How Personal Data and Information is Utilized

The following are the ways in which visitor data and information is used:

To customize this website for a more enhanced user experience

To send website communications

To share with third party providers (only after permitted by visitor, or as explicitly designed by contact form or other input mechanism)

[Zed Head]

Seriously, I, and probably others, hope you're for real.  But there doesn't seem to be a lot of substance, and there is some risk.  You're spread thin.

http://www.totalautonetwork.com/

[Total Auto Network]

Zed Head thanks for stepping in and trying to help.  I did send a DM to siteunseen to try and figure out what is going on, as well as to the owner of classiczcars.com to make sure I'm not breaking any rules on here.

And yep you've hit the nail on the head with a lot of points.  Although we would have posted siteunseens ad without phone number, we do all the time so I still think he has me totally confused with someone else.  Also I def did not share any info with anyone else.  The part about sharing contact info is to cover me when using 3rd party advertisers like Google or 3rd party mailing list software like mailChimp.  It's legal boiler plate info basically to make sure I am in compliance with Google's policies.

The reason I put my info on here was to be as transparent as possible.  Here is my personal website 83cv.com (although embarrassingly I haven't blogged much in a long time) and my personal FB profile https://www.facebook.com/christopher.m.vincent

And you are right I do need to work on my customer service thus I'm here in this thread trying to address the community directly.  Yep I have a bunch of sites, I published a lot over the last couple years to see what the winners would be and now I am building out the ones that are doing the best / I'm most interested in.  I only built sites about cars I'm personally interested in, such as 4X4s, vintage cars, campers, RV etc.  You are right on your last post I am spread too thin with this many sites though.  I have a full-time assistant and my girlfriend helps me with the social media but still way far behind.  Plus I do a lot of IT consulting so honestly I am not giving the popular sites enough attention and love that they need.  I'm probably going to be consolidating some of the sites together so they are easier to manage.

Just to be clear that twitter account is not me.  I haven't even set up the full website for my brand yet.  Just have that weak landing page now.  But like your point said that is why I have all my sites listed there so its completely open and honest.

My goal wasn't to come on here and spam my stuff.  I agree with you, It's appropriate to contribute to the community before trying to pimp your stuff out.  I just wanted to reply to this thread specifically so people can see that I'm a legit dude.   As far as being a Z car enthusiast, I love em.  Do I own one?  Not yet, with the baby coming I can only get the gf to allow me one toy and thats the built out 05 LJ (LWB TJ Wrangler) that I have.  One day I want to restore a 510 and maybe slam it.

As far as my sites content.  Def something I need to work on.  Now that some of the sites are getting traction, my next goal will be to provide better unique content and some cool stuff other than just an ads archive.  However the ads archive is something I believe that is a high value to future buyers/sellers.  It's something I wish I had when I was buying my 05 LJ in 2011.  I had to scrape through Jeep forums trying to get the info I needed.  I saw an opportunity to organize this data in a single site format.  And I can do it for different unique cars.  You'll notice that I'm not doing this for basic cars like the Honda Civic, just trying to get ad clicks.  It's all for rarer for the most part discontinued models, where info is harder to find.  Also I dont just RSS or API the feeds into my site.  Each ad is hand curated and created so that visitors have a standard format to use when browsing.  I want to make the user experience as clean as possible.

I've had a lot of people give me positive feedback on my process, so it bums me out to see the negativity on here.  I hope I can win you guys over, because honestly I just want to be a positive part of the online community and contribute.

 

[Total Auto Network]

BTW Zed, just noticed you are in Washington County.  I live on the border of Beaverton in PDX.  Do you drive you Z in town?  I never see them around here.  I only recently saw a 510.

[Total Auto Network]

Oh one point I missed.  I wouldn't say I know squat about Z cars, but I def am I noobie.  Now when it comes to Wranglers, Broncos, Zuks and building a rig, there is another story

[Zed Head]

Well, good luck with it.  I'll just point out another inconsistency, the kind that has the taint of scamminess.  You say you want to do a service, and that you "scrub through Craigslist and eBay weekly to aggregate ads " but still require information.  Why is it required, if you're going to scrub/find it anyway, and you're doing a service?  Those two things don't fit together.  That's when people start looking closer and wondering where those spam e-mails or phone calls came from.

I know that there are training courses out there about how to monetize people, on the internet.  But if it's too obvious, people will reject it.

 

[Total Auto Network]

So we scrub Craigslist/eBay to get a full scope of the market.  But this is only weekly because it would be too cumbersome to try and do it on the fly.  Unless I just RSS'd the feed in but then it wouldnt be curated and formatted in the way to keep the site organized.  In my opinion would be spammy this way.

But the problem I run into when aggregating the ads is trying to figure out when they are sold so we can mark them as such and not confuse buyers / annoy sellers.  So the Ad Submission allows the seller to get in touch with us directly and let us know or make changes on the fly instead of waiting for our scrub.  Obviously we still recommend Craigslist because its hyper local and reaches way more people.

That form you screenshot'd is from a plugin called Contact Form 7 (a common WordPress contact form plugin) where those two fields are defaulted that way.  I guess I could unrequire Email but then people could submit ads with no contact information.  So it would be useless to any buyer, except maybe as just a record.  Not sure on this.

Again the Ad Submission on my site is just an option.  I didnt even have it on there at first but decided to add it so I could better communicate with sellers directly to help moderate their ads.

And just to be clear, I am not trying to act like I'm doing this out of the kindness of my heart.  I absolutely want to make money and that is the goal.  Right now I am using Google Ads hopefully in the future, direct advertisers or selling parts.  Right now the all sites together make a decent amount of money, but its not a full time living, especially after paying my employee and working nights/weekends.  I still work my other consulting gig.

I'm trying right now to turn a group of aggregation sites into a full-fledged business with a brand and everything.  Thats the goal.  It's not easy but I'm confident it will work well, even if it takes me another 3 years.    I really do appreciate the feedback.  And I need to take a closer look at the boiler plate info on my legal pages to make sure I am not misleading anyone.