If you’re curious on how it works: when you go to an eBay auction from this site, our affiliate code is stored in a cookie in your browser. If you place a bid and win an auction in the first few days after clicking any link to eBay from the data sites, we get credited with a portion of eBay’s fee to the seller–so instead of eBay keeping all of it, they split it with us in varying proportions, depending on how many referrals we’ve sent per month. No extra is added to the seller’s fee, eBay simply kicks us back a bit of what they normally take.

On a part for $50, we make perhaps $.50. On a car for $50,000 we might make about $40, which is always pleasant (doesn’t happen often!).

The awesome/terrible part of the eBay affiliate program is that it’s absolutely cutthroat. If you visit Bob’s Acres of eBay Affiliate Auctions and click on an auction from his site, the affiliate cookie is set to credit him for the next few days, no matter what you bid on…unless you visit a different affiliate site in the meantime and click on an auction link, in which case Bob is knocked out and the new affiliate is champion.

With the many thousands of affiliate sites out there, whoever is last in line before you bid will end up with the credit, which makes it pretty interesting (it would be nerve-wracking if I depended on this money). There are people who make their living from eBay affiliate sales–they typically have hundreds of sites, focusing on niches and banking on search-engine traffic sending them (eventual) eBay bidders. From what I can see, it’s a full-time job running a web of sites like that, and not a very secure one at that, as eBay is notorious for changing terms and can cut you off without recourse if they decide you’re not playing by the rules.

In any case, I’ve been pleased that our hosting costs are usually covered each month, if nothing else. I’ve had brief-lived dreams that there might be a bit more to cover my time for site upgrades, etc. but the data sites just don’t get enough traffic to generate “real” money…which is why things seem to take forever around here–I (alas!) still have to work for a living. Between work and the million other things which nibble away at my time, there just isn’t much time left for data site work.

Many thanks to those who do use the eBay links on this site, it’s very helpful when you do! It has certainly kept me from having to do “begathons” or take on more obnoxious forms of advertising. Incidentally, you can donate directly to the site using paypal if you wish, either directly to “donations@xkedata.com” or by using the button at the top of the about page.

Dear sir, I write to inform you that publishing comnts sent by anonymous: individuels under US law you are leaving your self liabel for there coments,Tthis could be very exspensive for you if legal action was instigated Regards xxxx Att of law. [sic]

So, here’s the treasure hunt: which comment on the xkedata site prompted what looks to be a spurious “warning?” As far as I can tell, there is no law that states anything like that, indeed, the only hits I get from a quick internet search is a backwards “think of the children!” piece of legislation that has been proposed in Kentucky but is not actually law there yet.

I love that this love letter came from a German email address.

However, I’m hoping to find a week or so sometime this summer to do some heavy lifting on the site. I have a small list of “fixes”–mostly code improvements. But what would you, as a site visitor or user, like to see? All ideas are welcome, but I can’t promise I’ll actually do any of them!

Leave your ideas below. Anything goes, this is meant as a brainstorming session–from minor changes to new additions or getting rid of dead weight.

Had I been thinking about this in 1996 I could have had a “cool” domain name for all this, but, alas. I own a bunch of not-fabulous-but-not-horrible “.com” domain names that might work as the core domain name: xked, carcrux, motodat, motocrux, motorcrux, collectordata.

I will definitely keep the existing domains, they would automatically re-direct.

(And please do everyone a favor and do not patronize those fly-by-night companies that clutter up the web with their cheap plastic floor mats and cheesy seat covers, which they list for every car ever made. I swear you could enter “Vauxhall 30/98 parts” in a web search and come up with ten firms offering you oxygen sensors, floor mats and other trinkets, none of which you want to see.)

And that’s despite the calendar and coffee mug “sales” (if a few over a few years is selling something, ). The calendars and such seem to bother a few people extraordinarily. Not sure why.

One thing is bad, though, and that’s the holidays on the calendars themselves. They give you the options to have many different nation’s holidays on the calendar, and I opted for several different ones. I’m staring at a calendar right now that does the same…unfortunately, Lulu’s output mechanism isn’t too bright, and holidays that are shared among all of the nations overflow the date box for that day. Bah. The preview showed only the US holidays anyway, so it wasn’t too clear.

I’m resetting them to only show “US” events as that will at least not overflow the date boxes. My apologies for this snafu. It wouldn’t be the data sites calendar without one major cock-up. I revised the calendars online to correct this from this point forward.

• Images: We now have 73,000 images across all of the sites. The XK site just passed 10,000 images!
• Cars: We now have over 16,000 cars across all of the sites. The E-Type site is creeping towards 10,000, less than 300 to go!

Thanks to everyone who adds car or photo data to the sites! Especially to be thanked is PaulS, who tirelessly seeks out cars and adds them at a rate I find astonishing.