"Buy it now" Feature

[SoS]

So I've been thinking about a feature we could have on the site for quite a while.  Talked to Engledogg about it last week or so to get some feedback from him.  So this little idea involved us having a feature like the "add to my collection" we already have, this one would only be a "buy this now" button that can either open up a drop down menu or takes you to another screen that has links to places like BBTS, TFsource, TRU, Amazon, and/or an eBay page for said figure/product.

Heck, we could probably even use this as a means to have BBTS and TFsource as shmax.com sponsors.  After all, we would be sending a lot of foot traffic their way.  This feature could potentially even help us with auto-generating release dates or even keeping track of price data.

I'm posting this here, so as to get feedback and potential interest from our users instead of a mod-only conversation.  So, what are your thoughts folks?


--SoS

[triKlops]

Sounds good if it can be used to benefit the site.
Even better if this would lead to a small percentage deal for shmax users.

[Tripredacus]

Amazon also offers this type of thing in their affiliate program, or at least they did. It was something I saw a lot of Japanese websites take advantage of and something I toyed around with. I never made any money from it tho.

[triKlops]

Amazon also offers this type of thing in their affiliate program, or at least they did. It was something I saw a lot of Japanese websites take advantage of and something I toyed around with. I never made any money from it tho.

Yes it still does.
Radio Free Cybertron, www.tfradio.net , and www.collectiondx.com are 2 sites that come to mind for this immediately.
Might be worthwhile to look into this.

[shmax]

Sounds good, but old-timers will remember that we had an amazon.com link on product details pages for several years. Yes, it was connected to their affiliate program, but nobody ever clicked on it. I can see if I can look up the exact numbers if anyone is interested, but I don't think we ever drove a single sale over a period of several years, so I finally decided I would rather just drop the extra noise from the product detail pages, and got rid of it. As for BBTS, as far as I know they don't have an affiliate program, but I already have an agreement with them to use their photos in exchange for crediting them, which we already do.

If you guys genuinely want this kind of thing for your own convenience, then okay, but don't worry about trying to benefit me or the site; the servers cost what they cost, and I'm comfortable paying for them with or without the pennies that ads and affiliate links might bring.