I don't disagree with you with the fact that is not the vendors fault to provide a tool to satisfy every dealer'e need because to do that you will need as many different tools as dealers exist int he US. But reality is also not that simple as your set of "uncle Joe's rules". I can easily argue the reverse: Just because Dealer.com hasn't tried to make money with it doesn't mean is not a good idea.
The "idea" could mean a great benefit for the dealer but little reward for the vendor once you take into account development, testing, selling, implementation, training costs. As an example, many dealer are flocking to large website companies without understanding that those companies don't develop anything unless they can monetize it in a large number of accounts and it requires little support. So tools that may be useful in niche markets like for example a new car configurator in Spanish for a dealer in AZ may never see the light.
Dealers claim to want to be innovative, have the edge in technology, etc, then I see that most have no guts when it takes risk to implement something new nor patience when a new tool is available. I have many tools that I can deploy right now but I don't because some little crap doesn't work with IE7 and dealers get extremely frustrated and want to change everything when one guy with a $200 computer that he bought in 1995 can't use the newest video stuff tool for example. It is easily missed that 90% of your clients will be able to use it and the other 10% that can't most likely know they computer is a piece of crap but they can't pay for an upgrade with food stamps so they just call and bitch about it with their prepaid cell phone.
I can fill up a book with missed opportunities... a few weeks ago we added full managed chat to a dealer that for 85 chats in 3 days and they call to cancel while in a 30 day trial. One customer chatted at 4am and was pissed when the chat person couldn't give a fiance rate for someone with a 400 beacon score. The dealer says they didn't want to make customers angry.
But let me tell you an even better story that better exemplifies the issue here; 8 years ago I build the inventory search pages in Korean for the 300,000 Koreans in Seattle. My wife is Korean so she translated them. I built the pages, changed the database (not easy 8 years ago), had to take photos of my wife's writing, photoshop them, and build the menus one by one. I implemented them at a Honda dealer. A few months later the dealer call me and ask to take them down because one Korean customer complained that one of the menus said something offensive. I checked with my wife and her parents (they don't speak English but they speak Korean) and the just menu said: Car, truck, suv. Why did i take that down? One guy?
These are not the exceptions but the rule.
So you learn as a vendor. You develop careful and only if you can monetize it. I work by a different set of rules, I develop because I enjoy the success of seeing that my tools help people find vehicles and help my clients sell cars. Most of the time I develop first and see if I can monetize later. I can do this because I have a very solid business base and because I have no investors to answer to. I think I'm very different than most other companies.
