Dev of 1 built a $4.2M ARR dealership system. AMA.
Hello! I own Crosscut, the car dealership for buyers that hate nonsense. We began in 2003 selling on eBay.
We dog-food our own car dealer software platform. In the next year, we hope to open the platform to other dealers and let your "mom and pop" local dealer compete against Carvana and Vroom for the online, sight unseen customer.
The site is bleeding edge with NextJS/GraphQL/Apollo/Stripe/Plaid/Algolia etc.
We also just rebranded to Crosscut. Read about how and why.
Over 10,000 hours invested while running a business. AMA!
Trending on Indie Hackers
Google Whisk - Generate images using images as prompts, not text prompts
After 19,314 lines of code, i'm shutting down my project
Need feedback for my product.
We are live on Product Hunt
Don't be a Jerk. Use this Tip Calculator.
Nice! How did you come up with the new name? I like it.
Thanks @webindie! It was a long process detailed here. https://www.buycrosscut.com/blog/crosscut-rebranding
Hi Dennis,
This is insane! I LOVE your website! Just took a quick look at 2 videos, and it's amazing what you do!
(side note: I've done a cross-USA road trip on a Mustang in 2016, and bought that from a small dealership, with a similar idea as you have)
I'm curious if you'd like to take your videos to the next level.
What I mean is this: when you're saying something important, also show it visually, as some popup text. It doesn't have to be fancy, but it will be powerful to the viewer. I'm in the process of adding fancy texts/ messages just like that, for social media videos, but I think they would really work on your videos as well.
My take is that I will have this done in about 1 month (there's a lot of work involved to make them insanely awesome 😁) Please let me know if you'd be interested in something like this.
Thanks @johnt2021! Do you remember the name of the dealer?
Are you thinking Instagram stories style word popups?
Hi Dennis,
Unfortunately, not his full name, but I know his first name was John, like me :D This happened near Miami (I don't remember the exact name of the place, but I know it was a 45-or-so minute drive)
Yes, kinda' 😁I will implement those, and I think I can even expand on that😜
Yo @LawJolla! Cool product, and great revenue numbers. How'd you find your first 10(ish) paying customers?
Thanks @channingallen!
The revenue numbers are a little deceptive because that's for products, not recurring subscriptions like most Indie Hacker posts. Also, selling cars is quite a bit easier than selling most things -- I don't need to educate anyone on cars or why they need one.
The first 10 came from eBay. Today I market on Facebook, Craigslist, and Google Adwords. I also rely heavily on SEO.
To kick off the SaaS portion next year (bringing other car dealers onto my platform), it'll be a big word of mouth campaign with a lot of freebees. I believe SaaS-es should prove their value before a customer buys in.
Interesting you mention SEO, how has the last 6 months been for you with all of these regular algo updates?
I don't have stable numbers because our SEO strategies developed over the previous 6 months 🙈
Really liking Crosscut! I've got a project in the UK that focuses on running vehicle history checks. SEO is literally our biggest strategy and focus right now.
This comment was deleted 4 years ago.