I joined the Experian Automotive Affiliate Program, which got me thinking about VINs. At Traveledby.com I decided to only list Mercedes and BMW roadsters. While Boxsters and Spyders are nice roadsters too, there aren’t enough of them in Texas to work into a lively marketplace, part of my decision to narrow the focus. Regardless, Experian AutoCheck offers an interesting feature for affiliates, through Commission Junction.
Commission Junction somehow obfuscates affiliate URLs, so I won’t get into specifics. What I’m getting at, Experian allows you to pass a VIN to their AutoCheck program. To test it out, I clicked my own AutoCheck affiliate link (constructed using a VIN I found randomly in Google) which gave me a page with some basic info: year, make, model, etc. Just enough information to give the impression AutoCheck works, it identified the car properly, as far as I can tell.
The idea isn’t new. Amazon had (still has?) an affiliate feature like this, where with a custom script you could search/replace all book references on your website to point to specific books on Amazon’s website, for affiliate credit. That’s obvious enough. But where do I get my hands on a database of VIN numbers, to promote Experian’s AutoCheck? Any ideas?
Starting w/ Mercedes VINs, I found some information already. From 1983 onward, Mercedes VINs start with “WDB”, and roadsters will have the letter “A” or “K” in the 5th position. I also found the Mercedes-Benz Club Russia VIN decoder, which provides more specific information. For example, WDB1070461A030911 has a “leather pebble” interior.