10LikesWest Marine Discount / Sale Deals Email Newsletter
12-27-2016, 02:14 PM
#1
Senior Member
Thread Starter
Join Date: Aug 2013
Location: Tropico
Posts: 5,818
West Marine Discount / Sale Deals Email Newsletter
The "Great Deals" thread has had me thinking for a while about coming up with an automated system that would get data from websites and send an email when something is significantly discounted.
So I figured I'd take a stab at making a proof of concept for it and see how it goes. I'd love to get a few "beta testers" to check it out and give me feedback.
If you'd like to do that, you can subscribe to the email here --> http://eepurl.com/cvmvrf
Once you sign up, you will get an email confirming your email address. You need to confirm your email address to complete the signup.
Current iteration:
- Monitors West Marine's product catalog to see what gets listed in Outlet: http://www.westmarine.com/outlet
- Monitors West Marine's product catalog to see what gets listed in Sale: http://www.westmarine.com/sale
- Email is sent at 6am daily (Eastern) and only if something is added
- Maximum of 40 items
If this is useful, I'd like to make some important changes:
- Completed:Product images, descriptions, prices, discount % etc all right in the email.
- More sites (Bass Pro & Cabela's for example)
- "Instant" notification once a price change is noticed
- Category filters so subscribers can choose only say "fishing" vs everything at WM.
- Expand across more of the site, not just outlet
- Monitor for price drops on existing products which may not hit the outlet or sales pages
Feedback appreciated.
So I figured I'd take a stab at making a proof of concept for it and see how it goes. I'd love to get a few "beta testers" to check it out and give me feedback.
If you'd like to do that, you can subscribe to the email here --> http://eepurl.com/cvmvrf
Once you sign up, you will get an email confirming your email address. You need to confirm your email address to complete the signup.
Current iteration:
- Monitors West Marine's product catalog to see what gets listed in Outlet: http://www.westmarine.com/outlet
- Monitors West Marine's product catalog to see what gets listed in Sale: http://www.westmarine.com/sale
- Email is sent at 6am daily (Eastern) and only if something is added
- Maximum of 40 items
If this is useful, I'd like to make some important changes:
- Completed:
- More sites (Bass Pro & Cabela's for example)
- "Instant" notification once a price change is noticed
- Category filters so subscribers can choose only say "fishing" vs everything at WM.
- Expand across more of the site, not just outlet
- Monitor for price drops on existing products which may not hit the outlet or sales pages
Feedback appreciated.
Last edited by crazybeard; 03-23-2017 at 03:36 AM.
12-27-2016, 05:45 PM
#13
Admirals Club 
Join Date: Jul 2012
Location: Savannah, GA
Posts: 1,917
As a software developer who'd love to see this come to a reality, a few suggestions to get you started....
Sendy is the cheapest/best email blast software you can come by, and has an API.
https://sendy.co/
It uses Amazon AWS SES
https://aws.amazon.com/ses/
HTML Agility Pack makes it really easy to import 3rd party webpages, even if the syntax is broken and doesn't pass w3 standards
https://htmlagilitypack.codeplex.com/
To schedule your app to scan these sites at set intervals, Quartz is a .NET port of the popular Java framework
http://www.quartz-scheduler.net/
For importing sitemaps, Restsharp makes it really, really easy
http://restsharp.org/
You can get $200/mo in hosting credit from MS BizSpark
https://bizspark.microsoft.com/
To read/write to the database and track changes, Entity Framework is the standard
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/lib...v=vs.113).aspx
I suspect if you want this to ever take off, you'll need to look into referral links similar to Slickdeals or FatWallet. It's a tough business because AdBlockers make tracking cookies difficult.
Sendy is the cheapest/best email blast software you can come by, and has an API.
https://sendy.co/
It uses Amazon AWS SES
https://aws.amazon.com/ses/
HTML Agility Pack makes it really easy to import 3rd party webpages, even if the syntax is broken and doesn't pass w3 standards
https://htmlagilitypack.codeplex.com/
To schedule your app to scan these sites at set intervals, Quartz is a .NET port of the popular Java framework
http://www.quartz-scheduler.net/
For importing sitemaps, Restsharp makes it really, really easy
http://restsharp.org/
You can get $200/mo in hosting credit from MS BizSpark
https://bizspark.microsoft.com/
To read/write to the database and track changes, Entity Framework is the standard
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/lib...v=vs.113).aspx
I suspect if you want this to ever take off, you'll need to look into referral links similar to Slickdeals or FatWallet. It's a tough business because AdBlockers make tracking cookies difficult.
12-27-2016, 05:51 PM
#15
Senior Member
Join Date: Jul 2015
Location: Queens, NY
Posts: 3,348
Originally Posted by jj1987
As a software developer who'd love to see this come to a reality, a few suggestions to get you started....
Sendy is the cheapest/best email blast software you can come by, and has an API.
https://sendy.co/
It uses Amazon AWS SES
https://aws.amazon.com/ses/
HTML Agility Pack makes it really easy to import 3rd party webpages, even if the syntax is broken and doesn't pass w3 standards
https://htmlagilitypack.codeplex.com/
To schedule your app to scan these sites at set intervals, Quartz is a .NET port of the popular Java framework
http://www.quartz-scheduler.net/
For importing sitemaps, Restsharp makes it really, really easy
http://restsharp.org/
You can get $200/mo in hosting credit from MS BizSpark
https://bizspark.microsoft.com/
To read/write to the database and track changes, Entity Framework is the standard
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/lib...v=vs.113).aspx
I suspect if you want this to ever take off, you'll need to look into referral links similar to Slickdeals or FatWallet. It's a tough business because AdBlockers make tracking cookies difficult.
Sendy is the cheapest/best email blast software you can come by, and has an API.
https://sendy.co/
It uses Amazon AWS SES
https://aws.amazon.com/ses/
HTML Agility Pack makes it really easy to import 3rd party webpages, even if the syntax is broken and doesn't pass w3 standards
https://htmlagilitypack.codeplex.com/
To schedule your app to scan these sites at set intervals, Quartz is a .NET port of the popular Java framework
http://www.quartz-scheduler.net/
For importing sitemaps, Restsharp makes it really, really easy
http://restsharp.org/
You can get $200/mo in hosting credit from MS BizSpark
https://bizspark.microsoft.com/
To read/write to the database and track changes, Entity Framework is the standard
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/lib...v=vs.113).aspx
I suspect if you want this to ever take off, you'll need to look into referral links similar to Slickdeals or FatWallet. It's a tough business because AdBlockers make tracking cookies difficult.
English please.
All the best. Sounds like a great idea.
12-27-2016, 06:16 PM
#19
Senior Member
Thread Starter
Join Date: Aug 2013
Location: Tropico
Posts: 5,818
Originally Posted by jj1987
As a software developer who'd love to see this come to a reality, a few suggestions to get you started....
12-27-2016, 06:16 PM
#20
Admirals Club
Join Date: Sep 2014
Location: Hinesville GA
Posts: 4,802
Originally Posted by jj1987
As a software developer who'd love to see this come to a reality, a few suggestions to get you started....
Sendy is the cheapest/best email blast software you can come by, and has an API.
https://sendy.co/
It uses Amazon AWS SES
https://aws.amazon.com/ses/
HTML Agility Pack makes it really easy to import 3rd party webpages, even if the syntax is broken and doesn't pass w3 standards
https://htmlagilitypack.codeplex.com/
To schedule your app to scan these sites at set intervals, Quartz is a .NET port of the popular Java framework
http://www.quartz-scheduler.net/
For importing sitemaps, Restsharp makes it really, really easy
http://restsharp.org/
You can get $200/mo in hosting credit from MS BizSpark
https://bizspark.microsoft.com/
To read/write to the database and track changes, Entity Framework is the standard
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/lib...v=vs.113).aspx
I suspect if you want this to ever take off, you'll need to look into referral links similar to Slickdeals or FatWallet. It's a tough business because AdBlockers make tracking cookies difficult.
Sendy is the cheapest/best email blast software you can come by, and has an API.
https://sendy.co/
It uses Amazon AWS SES
https://aws.amazon.com/ses/
HTML Agility Pack makes it really easy to import 3rd party webpages, even if the syntax is broken and doesn't pass w3 standards
https://htmlagilitypack.codeplex.com/
To schedule your app to scan these sites at set intervals, Quartz is a .NET port of the popular Java framework
http://www.quartz-scheduler.net/
For importing sitemaps, Restsharp makes it really, really easy
http://restsharp.org/
You can get $200/mo in hosting credit from MS BizSpark
https://bizspark.microsoft.com/
To read/write to the database and track changes, Entity Framework is the standard
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/lib...v=vs.113).aspx
I suspect if you want this to ever take off, you'll need to look into referral links similar to Slickdeals or FatWallet. It's a tough business because AdBlockers make tracking cookies difficult.
Can I be your friend, might need your help in the future to understand that mess
