cobrakai Posted February 7, 2015 Posted February 7, 2015 Yes, we are nuts, we have always known that. We have no idea how this will work or what it will turn into. In business, you take changes and see what happens. The goal is to make it work the best it can and hope that it covers the costs. So far not so much Can you guys set up a donation link where we can contribute to the costs of Brickpicker? You might be surprised at how many people would donate. This could be a good test to see if making any parts of the site into a paid service would be possible. 2 Quote
Jeff Mack Posted February 7, 2015 Author Posted February 7, 2015 We will continue to see how it goes, but we may wind up keeping the pages free, but if you want alerts, that may become part of some sort of pay to use service. Tracking this service compared to the others out there, it isn't even close to the number of alerts and the speed compared to the others. To me, there is value in that. Quote
Jeff Mack Posted February 7, 2015 Author Posted February 7, 2015 Can you guys set up a donation link where we can contribute to the costs of Brickpicker? You might be surprised at how many people would donate. This could be a good test to see if making any parts of the site into a paid service would be possible. The problem with donation links is that there is no way to know what will continue to come in. There will probably be nice offering in the beginning, then it will trickle to nothing. I will have to hire Jerry Lewis to have a telethon and pump people up. Most people will donate once and that is it. There are a lot of services on this site that provide people ways to make and save money. We make $0.00 from Toys R Us links/purchases and 3 days ago I got an update from Target that they are dropping their commission on toys to 1%. Thanks Target Of course the goal is to keep things free. We know people like Free things and why there is nothing but crickets chirping when the discussion of the thought of charging for something comes up. When the data starts to show us what members are doing with the tools and it isn't exactly jiving with what we thought might happen, we sometimes need to really think about Plan B and start thinking of Plan C. Quote
DadsAFOL Posted February 7, 2015 Posted February 7, 2015 Over 4,000 individual SMS alerts (not including email) have gone out for the Palace Cinema since Feb 1. From my records, only 2 have been purchased. So this starts making me come up with other ideas on when should a set start getting SMS alerts and base it on how scarce/hot/needed the item is to control costs. This is just one set, there are others that are not that far behind. Do we really need SMS alerts? How many of you just see them come in an just ignore them? Should SMS alerts be a pay for feature to make sure you actually use them? Just ideas/just questions.... I do think that SMS should be a paid service. Not a lot - just to help offset the cost. You could package this with other data & analytics, or you could price it a la carte. Regarding the the 4000:2 ratio, here's my feedback. I like the SMS, but I may not choose to purchase every day a product pops. Maybe due to budget, maybe due to the 7-day rule. Either way, what would be awesome is a "snooze". You could set this both in the UI page, and also allow the receiver to reply by SMS - something like an integer (1, 3, 7, etc.) that sets the "days to snooze". So if i have an alert on PC, and I know that I have 5 days until I can purchase from AMZ, I simply reply "5" and alerts are suppressed for 5 days. Related, but different would be something to filter the noise from the AMZ game of adding a few at a time. Some days I have woken up to 40 SMS messages about PC and PS. This could be a setting in "alert preferences" to reduce duplicates. You could do something simple like "max alerts per product per hour/day". Or you could get a little more sophisticated and have users set their "do not disturb" hours (such as 11p - 6a) where the max is one alert per product. 1 Quote
cobrakai Posted February 7, 2015 Posted February 7, 2015 The problem with donation links is that there is no way to know what will continue to come in. There will probably be nice offering in the beginning, then it will trickle to nothing. I will have to hire Jerry Lewis to have a telethon and pump people up. Most people will donate once and that is it. There are a lot of services on this site that provide people ways to make and save money. We make $0.00 from Toys R Us links/purchases and 3 days ago I got an update from Target that they are dropping their commission on toys to 1%. Thanks Target Of course the goal is to keep things free. We know people like Free things and why there is nothing but crickets chirping when the discussion of the thought of charging for something comes up. When the data starts to show us what members are doing with the tools and it isn't exactly jiving with what we thought might happen, we sometimes need to really think about Plan B and start thinking of Plan C. Totally understand all that. I have been on here about a year and made a lot of money from the information here. I would happily pay a fee to continue to receive the information and/or the alerts. If people used the BP or alert links to buy a couple PS, PC, ToO, etc every week, I could see how that could easily add up to more money than a small monthly fee you could charge. Quote
No More Monkeys Posted February 7, 2015 Posted February 7, 2015 So this has been changed to a priority setup. The more watched sets get the higher priority and it has increased the quickness in which those Priority #1 sets get checked. A few not so great things I have noticed so far since this has been live. Just like I thought, the Non-USA user base doesn't really seem to care to use the feature at all. I think the ratio is like 100:1 of USA to Non USA for alerts. I know the site is still heavily USA favored here, but I thought there might be a little more interest. Maybe I need to make those areas more known and of course give it more time, again. I just thought more would at least view those pages. Over 4,000 individual SMS alerts (not including email) have gone out for the Palace Cinema since Feb 1. From my records, only 2 have been purchased. So this starts making me come up with other ideas on when should a set start getting SMS alerts and base it on how scarce/hot/needed the item is to control costs. This is just one set, there are others that are not that far behind. Do we really need SMS alerts? How many of you just see them come in an just ignore them? Should SMS alerts be a pay for feature to make sure you actually use them? Just ideas/just questions.... We will continue to tweak and work on ways to make sure members know it exists. Drop SMS completely. Keep only email. Most cell providers have email to sms forwarders. If service is useful and provider does not have email to sms, people can switch carriers 2 Quote
trekgate502 Posted February 7, 2015 Posted February 7, 2015 Just an example of the SMS Alert - last night at 2:30 am EST I was working away, heard the sms alert for ToO at Amazon, flipped over to my Mac, default home page of amazon (setup with brick picker affiliate link every time safari opens), ordered the 1 on hand and moved on. The alerts help bring me attention much better than the email messages for me especially in the middle of the night. Quote
Val-E Posted February 7, 2015 Posted February 7, 2015 (edited) Jeff, please see my below comments about the relative lack of foreign users 1) IIRC original service only had US data so perhaps a lot of people haven Edited February 7, 2015 by valenciaeric Quote
Alpinemaps Posted February 7, 2015 Posted February 7, 2015 So this has been changed to a priority setup. The more watched sets get the higher priority and it has increased the quickness in which those Priority #1 sets get checked. A few not so great things I have noticed so far since this has been live. Just like I thought, the Non-USA user base doesn't really seem to care to use the feature at all. I think the ratio is like 100:1 of USA to Non USA for alerts. I know the site is still heavily USA favored here, but I thought there might be a little more interest. Maybe I need to make those areas more known and of course give it more time, again. I just thought more would at least view those pages. Over 4,000 individual SMS alerts (not including email) have gone out for the Palace Cinema since Feb 1. From my records, only 2 have been purchased. So this starts making me come up with other ideas on when should a set start getting SMS alerts and base it on how scarce/hot/needed the item is to control costs. This is just one set, there are others that are not that far behind. Do we really need SMS alerts? How many of you just see them come in an just ignore them? Should SMS alerts be a pay for feature to make sure you actually use them? Just ideas/just questions.... We will continue to tweak and work on ways to make sure members know it exists. Personally, I think SMS alerts should be a paid feature. I look at every SMS message that I get. I pulled 6 or 8 RIs from various messages myself. And I always clicked through the link that was sent, so I'm assuming you get affiliate link credit for those. Quote
river41 Posted February 8, 2015 Posted February 8, 2015 I would think that if you can choose the vendors for each alert it may be helpful-for a example a haunted house you want all the vendors but a more current set you may only want amazon as a tax free vendor etc. Quote
pcaster Posted February 8, 2015 Posted February 8, 2015 How about a feature to choose the type of alert delivery per set? I'd be happy to turn off SMS and just receive email for some (sometimes I just want to know when something is coming into stock even if I'm not looking to purchase), but there have been many times that I've received an SMS up to 10 minutes earlier than the email. I'd also support SMS being a paid service if necessary. Quote
Jeff Mack Posted February 8, 2015 Author Posted February 8, 2015 Drop SMS completely. Keep only email. Most cell providers have email to sms forwarders. If service is useful and provider does not have email to sms, people can switch carriers It needs to be easy, many members are no where near as technological as you are and have no idea how to figure that out. Most I don't think will want to change carriers for this feature either. Jeff, please see my below comments about the relative lack of foreign users 1) IIRC original service only had US data so perhaps a lot of people haven Quote
Heart Juggler Posted February 11, 2015 Posted February 11, 2015 This looks like a really helpful tool! Just wondering is there a way to access stock alerts for UK? Or is this a feature that is going to be implemented (or not)? Quote
Jeff Mack Posted February 11, 2015 Author Posted February 11, 2015 This looks like a really helpful tool! Just wondering is there a way to access stock alerts for UK? Or is this a feature that is going to be implemented (or not)? It already has alerts for the UK Amazon and LEGO shops 1 Quote
Heart Juggler Posted February 11, 2015 Posted February 11, 2015 ....Its been a long day. Cheers Jeff Quote
richardcore Posted February 11, 2015 Posted February 11, 2015 Non-USA user here but like others I haven't had any email alerts yet. It doesn't seem to work. Quote
dcdfan Posted February 24, 2015 Posted February 24, 2015 Can WVM @ Walmart please be fixed? Walmart has it in stock. Stock checker says they don't have it & when you click as if they did, it just loops around the beginning. Thanks Quote
dcdfan Posted February 24, 2015 Posted February 24, 2015 Also double decker couch says not in stock @ Walmart but if you click the link, they do. In fact, everything from Walmart says out of stock & random checking some is. Quote
Jeff Mack Posted February 24, 2015 Author Posted February 24, 2015 Also double decker couch says not in stock @ Walmart but if you click the link, they do. In fact, everything from Walmart says out of stock & random checking some is. Are they in stock at your local store or online? I am looking at the Double Decker set and it is not available online, it is available at my local store. I can not order it and have it shipped to me. Quote
dcdfan Posted February 24, 2015 Posted February 24, 2015 (edited) Are they in stock at your local store or online? I am looking at the Double Decker set and it is not available online, it is available at my local store. I can not order it and have it shipped to me.Sorry, you're correct DDC is @ my store. Minecraft -the mine is another example then. Edited February 24, 2015 by dcdfan Quote
Jeff Mack Posted March 1, 2015 Author Posted March 1, 2015 I am just posting that for now, the SMS alerts will be disabled. You will still get email alerts. I am going to rework the SMS system because as of right now, we are just throwing a lot of money out the window. 1 Quote
Alpinemaps Posted March 1, 2015 Posted March 1, 2015 Fair enough. They've been useful, but at the same time, I can see how they are numerous. Could you implement a "renewal" system, where after a few days/weeks, you have go back and re-up the alert? I just realized there are a couple of alerts that I really should element all together. Quote
sroster Posted March 1, 2015 Posted March 1, 2015 Charge us 10 or 25 cents per text. You'll see people stop subscribing really quick except to ones they really want texts from. Quote
Jeff Mack Posted March 8, 2015 Author Posted March 8, 2015 I had to make a few changes to the way this alert system works because it it actually too fast with the updates and too efficient. It was costing us a small fortune to send out SMS messages for items that people were not really interested in buying. You will need to go in an check your items to make sure you are receiving alerts on the sets that you want. You will now have the opportunity to select either email and/or SMS for each sets for each store that you are interested in. There is also logic in there tracking purchases (mostly Amazon since they have the most changes). That will disable SMS alerts after a while if no purchases are made. You will still always get email alerts, but there is no need to bombard people with 100 SMS alerts if you are not ready to purchase that set at this time. Hopefully this will keep your phones from going crazy as well as keep you up to date when stock is available. It is also keeps the system Free for people to use. 6 Quote
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