Great question. If monetization is the issue, I wouldn’t mind an ad here and there.
On your point about not sharing dealer info. I agree to an extent and recognize that the feeling of needing to save their inbox/voicemail comes from spending a lot of time with the salesperson and forming a relationship. That’s real. I similarly feel bad for the Target price match folks when I call and they already know about my hack. But if LH power users got in immediately, we could just mark the deal as dead and noobs would stop reaching out to them.
At the end of the day, I like LH and am hoping it doesn’t get shut down due to sale. I see potential for more value over time in this new regime with more casual users. Hope others do too.
Wow thank you for the responses. I didn’t mean to distract us from the memes.
We have no intention to sell at the moment. @michael and I truly enjoy building this community and the banter here.
As to the evolving nature of the community – I agree and have been exploring relaunching our Pre-Negotiated Deals program as a potential way to address this. By allowing low-effort users to get a fair deal outside of the forum, we can potentially:
Reduce the friction on the forum and allow expert users to focus on leasehacking
Allow sellers to move certain inventory at a higher margin from the non-forum demographic
Enable LH to gain some marketing income to sustain its ecosystem
Obviously, this is contingent upon inventory recovery and sellers’ willingness to participate. If you know credible brokers/dealers who would be good candidates for this program, send them our way please!
@rmanzo7 We don’t see ourselves operating on the same business model as Slickdeals. Slickdeals relies heavily on advertising and affiliate marketing. We have worked really hard to avoid that, turning to crowdfunding instead where we ask everyone who can to chip in. When we do reach out to business for affiliate marketing opportunities, they are businesses that we think provide values to the community. We would pull back on our recommendation when we don’t think the program’s value proposition align with ours (e.g. First Republic’s increased interest rate). Funny enough, Slickdeals actually reached out to LH in its early days – we haven’t figured out a partnership model that would work between us yet.
You know, I never thought of this. That’s a good way to look at it (though there are so many auto forums out there).
I would be happy to move this to a new thread, but can we get a better title than “What to do with LH” so we don’t give out the wrong message? We are not looking to cash out. Everything we have built so far (Calculator, Rate Findr, SIGNED!) revolves around the core spirit of LH – helping users discover deals. We would definitely welcome more ideas on how to make LH an inclusive, sustainable platform without losing our hackr culture.
I think cutting down on the chat in deal threads (and most others) and keeping it in Off Ramp would help on the signal to noise ratio and keep people more interested. The Edmunds “lease deal” threads that are Q&A don’t have people talking about how much their cousin likes their Bolt.
Example: way too may comments in an EQS deal thread like “Ohhhh, I have a car also. It has tires and my house has electricity. My neighbor has a car with navigation, I knew a person that bought a 1980 MB 300SD on BaT and Hunter Biden had a G63 after college.”
LeaseHackr if it really wanted to… can eat Swapalease’s lunch. It’s only thanks to the community this website has built and the credibility it’s earned…
I wouldn’t sell that. I totally support some monetization to support the ecosystem, but the value of Leasehackr goes away if sold to venture capitalists or tech bros looking for impossible ROI profit margins.
The community is what makes this place great. I understand it costs money to maintain it, though.
I’ve been a member here for over 5 years. This is my only source for the “next” car, even when I do not need another car lol if say edmunds buys this place out I would not be disappointed. My project hiring manager said, “do what makes business sense to you.” With that said, best of luck! I’m staying regardless, even if I had to pay.
I don’t think you and I have always seen eye to eye on everything, but I cannot back this enough.
It may be cliché, but the people are absolutely what make this community; the people make LH what it is. I believe the departure of the trusted hackrs and us veteran users is a very real possibility in the event of a sale. At the end of the day, even with the best website, the platform will wither away and die… if that key component is removed.
If you guys like, send me a PM @littleviolette and I can give you some ideas on this.
I’ve actually thought this through and had an idea and a way to implement it that I think would relieve a lot of strain on the forum from the “Hi I want 1 Macan loaner please” type posts.
I think if done right we can keep a lot of that off the forum, make a nice new experience for people who really just want a deal (ex. average non-tech-savvy or not online forum-inclined people) without having to become a forum member or post anyway, while also adding a new revenue source for the site.
If you are looking to monetize more to help with upkeep costs look at LS1tech.com. The founder there built it into a million dollar a year business and then sold it. I am not saying you should sell, but there is always business opportunity for a forum even now.
I came here because I was interested in learning how leasing works, but stayed for the community. Been here a while and my two new cars are financed not leased.
But how do veteran hackers maintain their enjoyment using the site at the same time allowing new people to feel welcome?
Many people that I have sent this site to when they were looking for a car started learning, browsing around and then they get screamed down for asking questions that to us seems stupid, they either leave or get something from marketplace.
@littleviolette I wonder on the stickiness of new members statistics, at FB in early days they figured out that one a person had 5 friends on FB they were unlikely to leave and built their entire growth strategy around that.
This is great and if advertised, should encourage more people to become supporters. I have been lease hacking since 2014 (started with a Hyundai Genesis back in the day) and I loved leasehackr in the earlier days simply because it was a smaller community of like-minded car enthusiasts chasing the best value and sharing ideas, knowledge, and data points. I hope the Supporters Lounge can bring that earlier more intimate forum and filter out the “send me the dealer info” cacophony in most popular topics.
Edit: I can view the topics but I am unable to reply on the Supporter’s Lounge. Is this by design due to my status or just a forum glitch?
Perhaps that is part of the problem. I’ve been here for years and I’ve yet to barely speak to anyone (other than my spouse) about LH, let alone throw someone into the ring. If people advertise and get everyone to join the cool kids club, the cool kids club is no longer cool.
