CheckOutMyCards.com Blog

As promised in the post about having 3 million cards for sale, the new Card Details page is now live. Try it out and let us know what you think.

People have been requesting the ability to post ads on our site for a long time. We have seen the popularity of people using our blog comments, our facebook page, and other forums to try to promote sales or to find buyers for port sales.

New Classified Ads Feature
With our new Classified Ads feature we have enabled a way for you to directly target the users of our site. We have started with a very simple feature that allows you to post ads in the following categories.

• Promotion: Promote a sale you are running
• New Items: Advertise new items that were just posted
• For Sale: Draw attention to particular items you have for sale
• Port Sale: Advertise that you are interested in selling your entire portfolio
• Wanted: Let other sellers know what you are interested in buying
• General: General announcements 
• Other: Something not mentioned above

As this new functionality gets used, we will shape it to work best for the types of ads people want to post.  For example, we plan to add a button on Port Sale ads that will allow people to instantly purchase a portfolio or to make an offer.

Classified Ads Page
For the duration of the listing the ad will be visible on the new Classified Ads page.

Classified Ads on the Home Page
We display three ads at the top of the home page. These ads are chosen at random, but we try to weight the randomness so that ads get approximately the same number of home page views per dollar that was spent on the ad.

Your Classified Ad Stats
When you log into the site, you will find a new My Classifieds link on the left. This will show you stats about your ad. With the first test ad we posted, it took less than 2.5 hours to get displayed more than 1,000 times on the home page. Here are the current stats for that ad.
Home Page Views: 1,367
Classifieds Page Views: 65
Details Page Views: 95

Approval Process
Each ad that is submitted goes through an editing and security review process. This ensures that our site is always safe for anyone that may be visiting.

Listing Fees
The introductory rate for posting ads is $2 + $1/day. You can pick how many days you want your ad to be visible.

Post an ad, and let us know what you think.

We finished a very successful move tonight. Thanks to some help from Brent Unruh, the move went as smoothly as possible, and we now have room for some new servers that we are working on.

While we are working on these hardware upgrades, we have also been making software improvements to the site. Here is a demo of a performance improvement that Scott Bullock just finished making.

Many of you have noticed that the site has been gradually getting slower over the last few months. Since last summer, our server load has increased by about 50% and that means that our database server is now running at about 90% CPU nearly all of the time.

To combat this, we have designed a new storage system that should significantly reduce the required server resources, and we will be migrating to this over the next few weeks. Hopefully this will give us the performance improvements necessary to keep up with the demand. If not, we will need to make some very substantial investments in new server hardware.

10,000 Users Paying for 1,000,000 Visitors
While doing analysis of our web traffic we realized that the majority of our 8,000+ daily visitors never do any business with us. This is probably because our google search results so frequently put us near the top, and we end up getting a lot of people on our site that have no interest in ever buying cards. This means that the revenue generated by the minority of you that care to buy and sell trading cards paid for server processing and bandwidth that was used for free by more than 1.1 million unique visitors last year.

Our solution… show ads to the millions of visitors that come to the site who don’t care to buy or sell cards, but don’t show ads to the 20,000 dedicated users that have done business with us.

If you have ever purchased store credit or sent us cards on consignment, you will not see any ads while you are logged in.

Who knows… maybe this can help pay for some new server hardware. Let us know what you think.

Thank you for taking part in our test services over the past few months.  We have taken that data and have come up with new services and programs for 2011.

Please read through and get to know all of the changes. You will find that we have made an effort to improve satisfaction by offering faster services at lower rates.  Visit our fees page for full details about all of these services. Also please check your email for exciting information about upcoming specials.

SHIPPING

Bulk Shipping just got better!
– Now offered every day of the month
– You only need 10 cards to be eligible for bulk shipping
– You can get cards put in toploaders for only 15¢ extra
– First 10 cards $5.00; 15¢ for each additional card
– 75¢ extra for graded, encased, or jumbo cards
– International orders $10 extra
– Packaged within 1 week

New Toploader Option
With any shipment you can selectively choose cards that you would like to have shipped in a hard plastic toploader.
– 15¢ extra per toploader

Graded, Encased & Jumbo Shipping Reduced
We reduced the extra fee for graded, encased, and jumbo cards across the board.
– Bulk: $0.75 extra
– Standard: $0.75 extra
– Priority: $1.00 extra
– Express: $1.50 extra

Priority Shipping Cheaper & Faster
– First card is now only $7.50
– Shipped out within 1 business day

Express Shipping Now Cheaper
– First card shipped is now only $17.50

PROCESSING

4 Week Service
– 20¢ for each card
– No Grade, Encased, or Jumbo cards
– No Coins or Poker Chips
– $3.00 batch fee (per 1-500 cards)
– Your cards will be processed at 15¢ if we miss the due date
This replaces our old 8 week service, but you have another six weeks to use it. Since that service is no longer published on our site, simply specify “Standard” on your package and make sure it’s post-marked by Feb. 14.

1 Week Service
– 35¢ for each card
– No Grade, Encased, or Jumbo cards
– No Coins or Poker Chips
– $3.00 batch fee (per 1-500 cards)
– Your cards will be processed at 20¢ if we miss the due date
This replaces our old priority and express services.

3 Week Special Sized Service
– 75¢ for each item
– $3 batch fee (per 1-50 items)
– You can use this service for any size items
– You items will be processed at 50¢ if we miss the due date

Next Day Service
– $2 for each item
– $3 batch fee (per 1-50 items)
– You can use this service for any size items
– You items will be processed at 75¢ if we miss the due date

ACCOUNT UPGRADE OPTIONS

We are proud to offer the chance to sign up for our first official membership program that begins on January 1, 2011.

$50 Per Month Membership
– $50 account upgrade fee is charged along with monthly storage fees
– This gives you free storage on all items with an asking price of $1.00 or less
– This also gives you the ability to customize the following settings for incoming offers

• Auto-accept offer percentage
• Minimum offer amount
• Minimum offer percentage

Please feel free to contact us if you have any questions.

Thank you,
The Staff at CheckOutMyCards.com

The site now has built in support for account upgrades, and you can start testing them.

Just log into your account and click on the My Account Upgrades link. This is what you will find.

Once you have chosen one of the Test Memberships, you will be able to edit your Minimum Offer Amount, Minimum Offer Percentage, or Auto-Accept Offer Percentage.

At 12:01 AM PST on the first day of each month, we charge storage fees and account upgrade fees. You are invited to try out these new test options and let us know what you think.