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Monday, October 23, 2017

I Left Wheelwell






Just wanted to explain why I left Wheelwell.  First off I'm not going to lie, I wanted it as a way to feed interest in my American Motoring blog, YouTube, etc and but when I post a new YouTube video or article and really didn't receive any traffic from there.  But I'm willing to accept that maybe there is no interest in my content from Wheelwell members.

The big reason I'm leaving is that I was once a member of the automotive site www.streetfire.net.  They were trying to be a kind of YouTube for the automotive community and it worked pretty good for a time but it started to suffer from the same advertising plague that is creeping into Wheelwell.  At first there was a "shop" page, then ads start to show up on the borders of the site.  Next they started to allow advertising video which soon turned to non automotive ads.  Then the site eventually was overrun and it was difficult to find anything automotive on the site.

Wheelwell is going the same direction.  When it first started it was all about the members and their cars, then ads and shop page, then ads showing up in your "garage page" around your car which I'm sorry is total BS.  You make a cool car, post pics on their site, which draws views that makes them money.  But I was fine with all this until today.

Today I got a direct message from a Wheelwell "Creative Director" reminding me that there is a shop.  Then she asked what's on my "to buy" list of parts I have planned for my car.  That was enough.  Ads I can choose to click on or not.  Stores I can choose to buy from or not but don't send me direct messages.  That's like telemarketer calls. I can create my own garage page here on the blog and it will be ad free.

I understand Wheelwell needs to keep the lights on but when it's in your face all the time you just don't want to go there.

So I wish Wheelwell luck and I hope they don't end up going down the same path as Streetfire.  I'll do my own thing here.

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