VINwiki has amassed over 2 billion views by sharing car stories that traditional vehicle history services often overlook—from Lamborghinis with dolphin paintings to cars where rappers were embalmed. The platform now serves as both a 500,000-user vehicle history database and a media brand with 3 million subscribers generating 50 million monthly views.

“Every day someone tells me, ‘I would never have known this about this car were it not for that app,'” explains Ed Bolian, founder and CEO of VINwiki. “The value is in the novelty of being able to learn something that you would not normally find out.”

Started in 2016, VINwiki began as a technological approach to an information gap Ed noticed in the automotive field. The name itself reveals its purpose—”VIN stands for Vehicle Identification Number, and wiki simply means multiple contributors to a database or document that has value as a resource,” Ed explains.

Like many technology entrepreneurs, Ed soon found that user acquisition was more challenging than anticipated. “It costs so much to acquire users for any business, especially a non-monetized social experience app that’s just trying to build a large automotive database,” he says. The solution came in an unexpected form when Ed shifted to content creation as a growth strategy.

In 2017, he gathered friends for pizza and beer to record car stories—not as a revenue model, but as marketing content to drive users to the app. “The idea of ‘VINwiki Car Stories’ was literally just like a blown-up version of the type of crowdsourced content we were looking to have displayed, exhibited, and contributed to the app,” he recalls. 

The first 25 videos, shot in a single day, exceeded their expectations. “We got 50,000 subscribers in the first month. We got 800,000 views across those 25 videos when I was hoping for 50,000,” Ed says, adding that what began as app marketing quickly became his full-time job, growing into a media brand for automotive enthusiasts, collectors, and everyday car owners.

Uncovering Hidden Car Histories

For car shoppers, VINwiki provides information beyond what a standard vehicle history report typically reveals. As Ed explains: “You wouldn’t know that Kobe Bryant modified the transmission so his wife, who couldn’t drive a manual, could make it work. And now it’s been reversed, but it’s a special part of its car, and so it’s history.”

For current owners, the platform works as “your virtual glove box of just throwing all the receipts in,” says Ed. Owners record service history, modifications, and experiences, building a digital timeline of their vehicle.

For the automotive community, VINwiki saves stories that might only be shared “across a bar or at a dinner table” that deserve a broader audience,” Ed notes, adding that this is especially important for historically significant vehicles or those with notable celebrity ties.

The platform’s approach to checking information relies on community input rather than top-down control. As Ed describes it: “We don’t police for truth. We don’t evaluate the poster. We implore the audience and the users of the app to come into it saying, ‘Look, this is stuff that exists somewhere, and let’s collectively evaluate whether it’s true.'” 

Ed notes that this community-based system works well, saying, “Only once a month do I get a debate about whether something on it’s accurate, because it gets resolved in the comments.”

Content Strategy: Consistency Over Change

VINwiki’s growth comes from steady consistency rather than constant change.

Since June 25, 2017, VINwiki has posted a long-form car story every weekday—a schedule that Ed emphasizes has been key to its growth. “The secret to making VINwiki work,” according to him, is “the ability to do that every day for years and years. A VINwiki car story today looks 90% like it did in 2017.”

This consistency addresses what Ed sees as a major challenge in content creation: being output-driven rather than input-driven.

The interview format keeps costs low. “VINwiki is a very inexpensive thing to produce. It is both by its essence and by necessity inexpensive,” Ed explains. “It is interview-anchored. So I’m not trying to capture events live. I’m not vlogging, and so I’m not having to travel for all this content.”

Monthly Sponsorships For Steady Revenue

VINwiki’s revenue model differs from many creator economy businesses, especially in how it handles sponsorships. Rather than selling individual video spots, Ed offers monthly packages to sponsors.

“Since we’re releasing videos every weekday, the sponsors come on and they sponsor an entire month and sometimes multiple months per year because it’s turned out to be a very effective strategy for them,” he explains.

According to Ed, this approach offers several benefits. First, it provides more stable revenue for VINwiki. “I have no idea how many views today’s video or tomorrow’s video are going to get, but in the aggregate, I can generally guess what 20 of them are going to do,” he notes.

Second, it builds strong sponsor loyalty. “We’re in the eighth year of sponsorship with Premier Financial Services, the seventh with AutoTempest, the sixth with The Ticket Clinic,” Ed says. Most sponsors are automotive companies that see VINwiki’s audience as their target customers.

Third, it improves user experience, as “the ads come at the end and the logos in the beginning and it’s a little bit less in your face.” This makes viewers “more likely to support the sponsors” according to Ed.

Other revenue sources include platform revenue from Facebook and Google AdSense, merchandise sales, and speaking engagements and event appearances.

Building Through Collaboration, Not Competition

Instead of seeing other automotive content creators as rivals, Ed has used collaboration as a growth method. About 10% of VINwiki content comes from fellow creators sharing their best car stories on the platform.

This team approach matches Ed’s view of the creator economy: “We’re much better learning with, alongside, and from each other than we are like trying to be competitors. We all want to make the best content that we can, but it has truly offered many shortcuts and enriched my life to make such great friendships with other creators in the automotive space.”

He adds that these partnerships help both sides; guest creators reach VINwiki’s audience, while VINwiki gets engaging content and introduces its app to new potential users.

Challenges and Changes

Like any creator economy business, VINwiki has faced its share of challenges. Platform revenue can be unpredictable—what Ed describes as “the most fragile way you ever make a dollar.” He explains: “It feels like that worked this month. Will it work next month? And how will it change? And it will change a lot.”

Changes in social media algorithms and user viewing habits create ongoing hurdles. “The view habits of somebody who subscribed to a YouTube channel in 2017 are different than what they might change today,” Ed notes. “Inevitably, the person who was consuming five hours a day of automotive content on YouTube five years ago, that person has a different life today, and it’s less likely that they are going to watch my stuff.”

Despite these challenges, Ed notes that VINwiki has kept a positive, engaged audience.

Better Production, Same Consistency

While keeping the core “Car Stories” format that has helped VINwiki succeed, Ed also works on better-produced content options. The team recently started making “Car Trek” again, a Top Gear-inspired series with Ed and two other car YouTubers.

“I think that’s really what we owe the audience as stewards of their attention, we owe it to them to make the best content that we’re capable of,” Ed explains. “And that may be a different style of content than we’re capable of bringing them every day.”

For those working to build community-driven brands, Ed stresses persistence over perfection.

“I think it’s easy to think that you’ve got to be the best, and in social media content creation, you have to be the most persistent, and you have to listen to your audience in the right way,” he advises.

According to him, success needs commitment to a steady vision while staying open to audience feedback. “Nobody likes it at first because it’s always new and different,” Ed explains. “But over time, they figure it out. If you’re willing to engage in that process of the right storytelling and the right brand mission and the right brand messaging and balance that with the right kind of listening, you can come up with a content product that satisfies whatever the business needs are.”

As VINwiki nears its tenth anniversary, it shows that steady, quality content built around community interest can create lasting value for creators and audiences alike. As Ed puts it, “You are the car’s story.”