Saturday 27 October 2012

Bargain Hunt Lives !

As a keen LEGO bargain hunter, adding the Bargain Hunt ! feature to this blog a little over a year ago was a logical step. Having discovered the delights of Amazon in particular, and more specifically their tendency to discount sets, I was regularly perusing the Amazon LEGO listings looking for bargains anyway, so putting some of my finds up on the blog so others could also benefit seemed like an obvious thing to do.

I expected some level of interest, but I wasn't prepared for how popular the feature would become. It quickly became the most visited page on the blog apart from the home page, and it has remained in pole position ever since despite a shameful level of neglect over the past few months. Many readers have even e-mailed me to moan about the lack of updates, and I guess I deserved it.

Having initially started out with the aim of identifying sets which were at least 30% off RRP, I experimented for a while with other formats, such as picking a different theme for each day and listing the best deals. Inevitably, however, the sheer time commitment inherent in finding the bargains and then manually coding the listings started to take its toll, and the updates became less and less frequent. The final nail in the coffin was probably my collaboration with Huw from Brickset on an automated system of finding and displaying the best bargains across Amazon sites in six countries - the Bargain Watch system, which is hosted on Brickset and has proved to be very popular. Once this was up and running, it became incredibly hard to motivate myself to manually code listings on a frequent basis, and so the Bargain Hunt page started to die a slow death, with only an occasional, sporadic posting saving it from total oblivion.

And yet....reports of the permanent demise of the Bargain Hunt ! page have it seems been greatly exaggerated, and like a phoenix from the ashes it has once again burst into life. This is largely thanks to the sterling efforts of Huw who has made it possible for me to more quickly and easily generate and display discount listings on Gimme LEGO, which makes posting bargains much less time-consuming and therefore greatly increases the chances of me pulling my finger out and posting regular Bargain Hunt ! updates. It should hopefully cut down the number of disapproving e-mails I get if nothing else....

Readers in the UK and US can therefore expect a diet of Top 10 discount listings by theme much like I used to post, albeit more regular, plus anything else that I figure out how to do once I've familiarised myself with the system.... I'll also keep a listing of deals 40% off or better for UK, US, France, Germany, Spain and Italy permanently displayed at the bottom of the page, and will occasionally throw in info about promos being run by other retailers if there's anything worth mentioning. Finally, there are links to take you straight to the LEGO listings for a host of different retailers at the top of the Bargain Hunt ! page, and if there are retailers you'd like me to add to the list then get in touch and I'll think about it....

You can access the Bargain Hunt ! page from the menu on the right side of the screen or else by clicking here. I hope you find the listings of some use; please feel free to contact me or leave a comment if you have any suggestions for how the listings could be improved, and happy hunting !

No comments:

Post a Comment