CarPrices.com

CarPrices.com is a San Diego-based Internet company whose unique business model is redefining auto-related e-commerce. It is the only automotive Web site whose sole objective is to ensure that the customer wins every time. CarPrices.com and its affiliates are empowering car buyers and owners by making it easy and fun to comparison shop for everything they need - from the cars themselves to financing, insurance and more.



 CarPrices.com was co-founded in 1998 in San Diego by Roy van Beaumont and Ahmed Ghouri. As of January 2000, the company had 60 employees.

 Initial seed capital was provided by Safi U. Qureshey, co-founder and CEO Emeritus of AST Research. Qureshey serves as chairman of the board for the company.

 CarPrices.com has more than 60 Co-Branded partnerships with top Internet sites, such as TheGlobe.com, FortuneCity.com, Infoplease.com and NetTaxi.com.

 CarPrices.com’s affiliate program consistently is ranked as one of the best on the Internet.

 As of January 2000, the company had 50,000 affiliates, three times larger than any other automotive competitor.

 Traffic on CarPrices.com currently is doubling every quarter. The site registered 1.5 million visitors in January 2000.

 CarPrices.com’s site was responsible for $105 million in new car sales in October 1999, 400 percent higher than the same month in 1998.

The operating agreement on the join page is too technical, can you summarize its contents?

The operating agreement is a legal contract that affiliates automatically agree to when joining the program. The basic points are as follows:

1. The affiliate agrees not to abuse the affiliate system, exploit carprices.com or its host company, AutoFusion Inc. and remain within the program rules and regulations as listed within the agreement.

2. The relationship is month-to-month and either Carprices.com or the affiliate can terminate the relationship at anytime.

3. Regarding payment of affiliates, it states that affiliates are paid on a monthly basis and must have a minimum of $100 in revenue accrued to qualify for payment.

What are we paid on and how much?

We offer our affiliates 50% of the generated revenue from CarPrices.com. We have set up what is referred to as a “bounty system” with partners such as AutoVantage, Progressive Insurance, Warranty Direct, etc. This means that CarPrices.com is paid a bounty fee for referred leads. However, it takes 30 days for us to receive a lead report from AutoVantage, Progressive Insurance, etc. which is why we estimate your revenues on their stats page. Commissions and partners are listed here.

Where do I find my statistics and what information can I find there?

The statistic pages (located at aff.carprices.com/login.shtml) are provided for our affiliates so that they may check the progress of their program. Members may first see the date of their program launch, their revenue generated for the quarter and how much they’ve already been paid. Affiliates then have several different pages that they may view to provide them with information on their users, cookies, revenues, etc. Following is a list of each feature available on our members page.

1. QUARTERLY AND MONTHLY REVENUE SUMMARY: This page shows each service that generates money on carprices.com. This is an estimate pending verification of qualified leads by our 3rd party vendors (AutoVantage, etc). To qualify, valid forms must be completed, with no duplicates, etc. In general about 5-10% of leads may not qualify (e.g., due to duplicates, etc), but this is taken into account when we report your revenue.

2. EDIT AFFILIATE DATA: Here, Affiliates may change their information they provided on their application such as billing information, website URL, etc.

3. CHANGE COOKIE TO MATCH MY SITE: Members may set a cookie on themselves so that they earn commissions from activity coming from their own computer.

4. DISPLAY CAR PRICES BANNERS: This page provides all the banners and button graphics that are available for affiliate use.

What does the "Change my cookie to match my site" link do?

A cookie is a way of saving a user's state. We use this cookie to track individual users and mark users as belonging to a certain affiliate if that user came from that affiliate. By changing your cookie to match your site, you are simply making yourself a user of your site so another affiliate won't get credited for your actions.