I'm the founder of camelcamelcamel, AMA!

Thank you so much for making this site. I always check product price history before big purchases to make sure I'm not buying at a high point. Do you have any plans to expand to checking prices on other websites?

Thank you for using it!

We have no expansion plans at the moment. We used to have a handful of sites for other retailers, but they just didn't generate the same level of interest that Amazon did. Eventually we shut them down to let us focus on one site.

Expanding to other international Amazon sites might be in our future, however.

Please start tracking Amazon Mexico ASAP

Would love to but Amazon requires a domestic address to participate in the Associates program there.

Could a remailer get around this?

Also requires a domestic corporation or citizenship, so probably not.

Is there a reason you haven't plugged your Browser Addon anywhere? I'm not sure if you get the same revenue stream from it compared to the site, but it's helped me.

For all those people saying the site looks cool but will forget it, just get the Addon (called Camelizer for Firefox and Chrome) and click it any time you're on a product page! Shows you the history and allows you to setup notifications at the same time.

Thanks for this great service /u/L1quid.

I figured plugging our site was enough spam for one AMA!

Thanks for using it. Glad to hear the Camelizer is working for you.

What has amazon done to intentionally or unintentionally make it harder for you to run camelcamelcamel?

The ongoing lack of shipping prices in their API data is a common complaint from our users, as is the current problem with scammer merchants. If those two things changed, we would be a lot happier, as it would mean happier, safer users.

Not directly relevant, but have Amazon responded about scammer / hacked merchants at all? Seems to be, at least in the UK, hacked accounts with decent feedback.

A lot of them have the "before you buy please contact us via [email]" in the listings.

I haven't read anything, but have been hoping for a big response.

This has to be the biggest drawback to using your service; I have to stop following most things eventually because I get so many phony alerts. Is it possible to exclude items with people who, say, use the word "email" in their seller name/note?

I REALLY wish we received any merchant data from Amazon, but all we get is the merchant name. Sellers almost always put "email" and the like in their description.

Besides the merchant name, you also know how approx. long ago they launched (by how long ago your camels first saw their name), approx. how many items they have for sale, and how their prices compare to other merchants. Comparing that information between fake and real sellers, it seems like it may be possible to guess, up to a certain confidence level, whether a merchant is a fake. Also, you could try frequency analysis on the seller's name to train your camels to spot scammers.

We do use some of these metrics to detect scammers.

As someone not really familiar with the "scammer merchant issue" can you go into detail? Do you have a write-up or description of the problem? Detection information metrics would be useful and what is the scam that is being done exactly?

Merchants who sign up on Amazon, list a bunch of products for significant discounts, then try to take the transaction off Amazon so they can take your credit card number.

Are worried that Amazon will suddenly block you one day?

Sure, but that's typical of anyone who bases their business on someone else's platform.

How have your interactions with Amazon been? I would think that they would prefer camelcamelcamel not exist?

They allow us to be a member of their affiliate program, and we strictly abide by their rules. Beyond that, I couldn't really guess how they feel.

First i just want to say I absolutely love your site. Simple, spamless, and wildly efficient at what it does. From my perspective, I think it would only hurt Amazon to block you. I have purchased MANY more large items on Amazon since I have started using your site to ensure I get good deals. Heck, I have 8 or 9 things that I am tracking and will buy immediately once they are reasonably priced. I have already used your site to buy things like super quality chef knives and an awesome Dremel. I would have never purchased them online without your site.

Keep up the good work. It would be interesting if in the future your site could also expand to some of the other major online merchants to price compare and track. For example, it would be great to know that on walmart or home depot's site my product was not currently priced cheaper.

I'm glad it is so useful to you!

Hi,

Sometimes I get notifications that an expensive item has dropped substantially (ex: a $1200 laptop discounted to $500), when I go and check the price on Amazon the deal is gone.

Is this a strategy that resellers or Amazon use to get customers in? I figured you would know about the inner workings of the site and how it affect the data quality of your software.

Thanks!

Third party prices are really difficult, particularly for our users. Merchants often only have an inventory of ONE item, so if it is a great price and sells quickly, the listing disappears. That makes it difficult for even the most hard-working camels to monitor.

Combine that with unscrupulous merchants who post items and then get removed by Amazon, and you have a lot of offers that don't stick around for very long.

More often than not, the old adage holds: if it's too good to be true, it probably is. $700 off on a laptop? I'd be careful.

I encountered some very strange third party sellers when using your site to track a smartphone for price drops last year. There were 2 or 3 accounts that appeared to be Chinese, and the only things they sold were high end electronics at huge discounts. The listings always disappeared quickly, and the accounts were many years old with just a couple 5-star reviews each, no activity since 2011 or 2012. It seemed too good to be true so I ignored them.

This AMA reminded me to check those accounts again. They are now filled with dozens of angry 1-star reviews from people who bought stuff over the holidays and never received their packages. Not sure if this was a very patient scammer who set up accounts in good standing years ago to rip people off way down the line, or if the accounts got hacked to take advantage of their good reviews.

There has been a big problem with scammers lately. Hopefully Amazon wipes them all from their system soon.

So, what's the story behind the name camelcamelcamel?

See https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/5xuniu/im_the_founder_of_camelcamelcamel_ama/del4e9u/

So, you're the asshole who prevents me from buying stuff on Amazon because it was 30% less for 3 days last October...and just maaaaaaaaybe it will get down to that same price again?

Stay hopeful!

HA! Tell that to my wife who's still waiting for that new TV!

That's a category where waiting will only help your wallet.

Thanks for doing an AMA! I'm a vinyl junkie and swear by camelcamelcamel for notifications. Just wondering why you use that ASCII "THANK YOU" message when clicking-through your links? Not complaining, I love it! Just curious.

That page loads quickly and gets our message across, and those were the two goals.

I love vinyl, too! Got a bunch of The Verve's 180g re-releases as gifts recently.

Hell yeah! Great taste! What was your album of the year for 2016?

Deep Sea Diver - Secrets

Been using camelcamelcamel for years, always check before making big purchases.

Any plans to offer an API?

How many hours a week do you work?

Are your two employees local or remote (and do you have an office or work from home)?

Thanks for doing an AMA!

Thank you for your continued support.

No plans to offer an API.

It depends on the week. The first 5ish months of every year seem to be my "let's see if I can burn myself out" phase. So right now I put in probably 6-8 hours every day of the week. Then summer is sort of a lull where I'm visiting family and enjoying the outside world, and fall has us busy again while preparing for the holiday shopping season. So, the answer is "sometimes a lot, sometimes a little."

Two of us used to work and live together, with a third being remote. Now, two of us live in the same city and my former roommate is remote, but we all work from home.

No plans to offer an API.

That's a shame, why not?

Exporting data from Amazon's API is against their terms of service.

How do you profit from the site?

Primarily affiliate marketing, but some ads too.

Pardon the intrusion but how well do you do? Is this a full time job that pays the bills for you three?

It is a full time job for the three of us. And I am well, thank you for asking.

First, Thanks for doing this.

My question: What happened to PriceZombie and why have you been allowed to keep CamelCamelCamel alive? I read a lot of your responses and it seems you've been in contact with Amazon about CamelCamelCamel, and they don't seem to mind. Was there a lesson learned that is pushing CamelCamelCamel in a different direction or plain luck? Been thinking about this for about a year now, glad I have the opportunity to ask.

EDIT Here's a link to the post about PriceZombie shutting down to save anyone some time.

My theory -- and that's all it is, obviously, as a third party -- is that PZ broke one of the cardinal rules: do not compare Amazon's prices with other retailers. This has been a huge no-no since day one for us, so we have never done that, and PZ was doing comparison shopping with tons of retailers on one site. We strictly abide by all of Amazon's affiliate rules to avoid meeting a similar fate.

So someone could, in theory, take CamelCamelCamel data somehow, and make their own site with CCC/Amazon data compared to other retailers? Would that break affiliate rules?

Comparison shopping is against the rules, as far as I know.

Why'd you call it camelcamelcamel?

I had a domain name with no site, and a site with no domain name.

And an extreme lack of foresight.

You mean foresite

An upcamel for you.

(to the tune of The Dreidel Song)

Camel Camel Camel, I made you out of clay

Camel Camel Camel, what's the price today?

Not going to lie, I have mentally sung this more than once before.

I assumed it was because the chart showing the peaks and troughs of a product's price looked like the humps of a camel or three... Apparently not. Oops.

That is a convenient and unexpected result of our charts, true.

What made you decide to register that domain in the first place?

The name popped into my head and I grabbed it.

Was "camelcamel" taken already?

Looks like someone is currently squatting it.

What's up?

Just had breakfast and petted my cats.

I'm skeptical. Can we get some proof of said floofs?

julian: http://i.imgur.com/vKTFLpG.jpg

bubbles: http://i.imgur.com/Vu9msGY.jpg

snugglebath: http://i.imgur.com/qw23wzk.jpg

No Ricky?

We adopted them together. If only they had a third roommate at the ASPCA.

Thanks for creating this site, I've saved so much from using the price drop alerts.

How long does it take for the site to realize there's a price drop and send the notification out?

We aim for about 4 price checks per day for any product with at least one price watch. Ideally, this would be much more frequent, but we monitor so many products that we can't do hourly checks...

Does the frequency of price checks change as a function of how many watchers it has?

It does.

What's preventing you from checking more often?

Limits placed on the number of API requests we can make, limits on server resources (less so than API requests.)

Sometimes I have old price checks running on CCC that are discontinued products, I no longer want, or already bought. You could send occasional email reminders and then an easy way to click them off, I would be happy to clear some out then your load would decrease.

That's a good idea. We actually have a small-ish problem tracking products like that, as it does indeed take up our scarce resources.

What should I give my girlfriend for our one year anniversary?

Have you considered a tasteful Camel figurine?

Is there an official app? If not is there one in development?

No app. We plan on making our site more mobile-friendly this year, but don't have any plans to release a native app.

Would you consider crowdfunding an app? I'm sure many would contribute.

It's less about funding and more that Amazon keeps a tight rein on affiliates and mobile apps.

I'd really like a feature that allows me to export my list of tracked products. I essentially use your site as my Amazon wishlist and track hundreds of products, and i'd be really bummed if it ever disappeared. I currently have no way to back it up.

Also, every once in a while a message pops up that asks me to reprice hundreds of price alerts at once, which is something i never, ever want to do. I set my alerts at certain prices for a reason and every time that alert pops up im worried that i'll misclick and ruin my entire alert list. Please kill that message -- or at least make it much clearer what the buttons do. Currently they're labeled something like "okay" and "dismiss" which isn't entirely intuitive given the wording of the message. A way to turn that message off entirely would be very welcome.

And because this subs idiotic automoderator will delete this if i don't stick a literal question in here somewhere: Why is the sky blue?

How do you imagine this backup being presented? A CSV of ASINs and desired prices? XML?

I would be interested to see what your desired prices look like, as that message should only appear if the system thinks they are too low to ever generate an alert. Good feedback! I have passed it along to the camelino in charge.

In a nutshell, what is camelcamelcamel and why should I care? I seriously, until I saw this post, have never heard of it.

camelcamelcamel is a website that helps people save money when shopping at Amazon. You can receive email alerts when prices drop to levels you're willing to pay, and view charts of historical prices to help you decide if the current price of a product is good or not.

If you shop at Amazon and like saving money, you might care. If you hate camels, you might not.

Going to be honest I've never heard of this before, looks like something in that'll be added to my bookmarks but might be forgotten about (sorry OP), at what point did you realise that this was more than just a coding exercise?

Maybe after 6-12 months after official launch? I was creating a lot of stuff at the time, so it was just another thing I was making. Eventually there was fairly consistent (if low) traffic, so we figured we should really push and see what it would turn into.

I have only ever gotten a desired price alert like 1 out of 10 times... Am I just a cheap ass who puts the desired price too low ;)?

Ever the optimist, zoglog.

How easy would it be for Amazon to block you from doing what you do? How easy would it be to tweak it so it works again? I'm actually somewhat surprised they haven't tried to thwart you. Usually big companies don't like when stuff like this happens (i.e., harvesting data in anyway). I use your service on and off, so I support it (much like I do Brickseek), but any time I feel like something is good for the consumer (and especially if someone like you is indirectly profiting from it), then people get all litigious.

Is this at all something you worry about?

They are well aware of us, as we work "with" them through their affiliate program. They provide data via an API, rather than us "harvesting" it. So I think it's a pretty friendly relationship, such as it is.

Still waiting on that lunch invite with Jeff Bezos, though.

I'm glad to hear it. Hopefully that won't change any as your popularity expands. Good luck!

Thank you.

Rather than blocking you, I feel the tactic would more likely be "embrace, extend (and hopefully not extinguish)". So on that note, how large of a private island are you holding out for? On a more serious note, do you think Amazon would ever be likely to make your service more "official" and what do you think that would look like?

Could I have a camel ranch instead of a private island?

Hard to say what Amazon is thinking...

Jeff likes the breakfast octopus.

Too inky.

I ABSOLUTELY love you your site. Have you every considered developing an API (to automate accessing price histories)?

THANKS! We have no plans to publish an API.

I'm guessing this would be against the affiliate rules?

Correct.

Which is better:

Tabs?

Spaces?

Better? Dunno. But I'm a 2-spaces guy.

And I put my braces on their OWN LINES.

I've noticed that historical price tracking does not display special discounts such as black Friday, cyber Monday etc., and the alert is not triggered when discounts happen due to these amazon in house promotions.

Is this something they have coded intentionally so it is invisible to camel? Could you explain why this would be the case?

Thanks for the great site!

I doubt Amazon considers us when making decisions. More likely is that they have separate systems for lightning deals / special prices and regular prices, and their affiliate API only ties into the latter.

Thanks for the AMA!

At which point did you decide that it was worth it to invest in your little test project? And what were your steps to get to the success you have today?

I'm asking because while i often have some nice ideas, i never go through with it. I have no idea how it would be profitable in the end.

When I started working on it, I had almost no expenses. I lived in a warehouse in Oakland and paid very little rent. I was just writing code because I loved it, and it was interesting; the projects I created were also useful to me, which I think is an important quality.

Make stuff you need, focus on solving a problem. If you have the luxury of doing so, ignore thinking about the money, as that often appears by itself if the project is useful to enough people. Just because you can't see the profitability now, doesn't mean it won't eventually be there, and you can turn away from a lot of potential projects if that is your main concern. That's an easy trap to fall in.

What is the purpose of blocking VPN users?

Preventing abuse by users on their networks. We really dislike blocking VPNs but they are a source of constant problems for us.

What kind of abuses, out of curiosity?

Using all our bandwidth / resources to scrape our site, usually.

Whats your most embarrassing "fart in public" story? Involving yourself or just something you witnessed.

Anyone who runs on treadmills at the gym in public or misjudged their potency while in or near an elevator can probably imagine.

What was the first item that you wanted notifications for?

Product ID #1 in our database is The Beatles (The White Album).

The first item we ever sold was a book on creating diceless role playing games.

Which item has the most concurrent trackers?

Amazon Echo is in a close race with the Instant Pot pressure cooker.

Could I make the assumption then that the White album was the reason you wanted this kind of service? The reason you started camel camel camel?

That's probably a stretch. I started the site because it was an interesting project to code, primarily.

And I'm really more of a Help! guy, anyway.

Great product. Saved me tonnes of money. Thank you!!

How about scraping through a wishlist or shopping cart for items, and automatically creating pricewatches on all found items at a certain percentage off? I know that there is a "products on this page", but it's overly inclusive (I just want items in saved for later, or shopping cart or wishlist) and doesnt let me auto-create-watches.

After logging into your Camel account, go to http://camelcamelcamel.com/wishlists

What do you view as CamelCamelCamel's primary ad vantage over Keepa? Seeing as they seem to do basically the same thing.

Also, is there any way we could filter new/used 3rd party pricing based on the number of reviews, star ranking, and age of the 3rd party customer?

I like our interface and charts better, and I believe we have longer term historical data. But I haven't spent too much time on their site. You would have to decide that for yourself.

I wish we had more merchant data available to us, but all we get is the merchant name. No merchant or product ratings, no merchant age, etc.

Congratulations on your millionth user! I've been using the site for years (back when you did Best Buy and Newegg too) and wondering, any way to tell which number user I am?

Thanks for a great site, and keep on trackin'!

PM me and I can tell you.

THANK you for saving me thousands over the years. How best can I support the amazing work you guys do?

If you use our site, you already do support us and we very much appreciate it.

Why have you not got a mobile site yet? I'd find it very useful to check the site on my phone

We are cavemen and have no excuse for the lack of mobility. But it is on our todo list for this year.

Thanks for your site. I've used before, will use again.

My default when placing a purchase is to go to smile.amazon.com so they make a small donation to charity.

Would/does replacing the www with smile in the URL circumvent/replace your affiliate fee with the donation or do they coexist? If the latter, would you consider using smile instead of www?

If you have a Camel account, you can change your user settings to use Amazon Smile. Thanks for your support.

Have you considered a chrome extension for your product? I think the idea is great but I know I will forget to check unless something blinks at me.

https://camelcamelcamel.com/camelizer

Would you rather fight one camel-sized duck or 100 duck-sized camels?

I think camels are far more rude than ducks, so I'm gonna have to go with a camel-sized duck. Throw a loaf of bread at it and you're golden.

[deleted]

We're thinking about it, definitely.

Not many questions yet. For or against the toes of camels?

Camel's gonna camel.

Has Amazon ever contacted you directly regarding your site?

As members of their affiliate program, we hear from them occasionally. No calls from the big man, though.

You mentioned in another answer that you were working on other projects during the first 6-12 months of starting camelcamelcamel, would you mind giving us a brief rundown of what types of projects they were?

At that time, I had a windows app for capturing screenshots / editing images / uploading and sharing images, which also allowed multiplayer drawing.

We ran a fairly large (for the time) free file hosting site that eventually got overrun by brazilian spammers posting javascript naughtiness to Orkut.

This one is fun https://github.com/L1quid/Explosivo

I really just came here to say thanks so much! I've been using camel for years and always recommend it to my friends. However I have to have a question to post so the obvious question is which is your favorite ninja turtle?

Thanks.

I could never choose a turtle. I identify with each of them at different times.

Will you support Amazon Australia when it is released?

If we can join their program remotely, rather than needing a domestic address and incorporation, absolutely.

I will be tracking the prices of Coopers Dark.

Thank you so much for saving me cash!

Is there a reason the price alerts are less often accurate from New by 3rd-party vendors than New by Amazon?

Lower inventory for third parties means offers disappear when they are purchased, whereas Amazon offers tend to be longer lived.

And the recent merchant scams haven't helped.

First off, thank you for making this. I use it a ton! My question is, do you plan to ever release an app (on android hopefully) to allow us to add things to watch for? You could utilize the "share to..." ability to share the link to the app so you can grab the ID.

No plans for an app but we do have plans for a mobile-friendly site.

What's the best deal you've gotten as a result of using your service?

"Best deal" being a personal preference, and not necessarily the highest percentage off.

Most recently, I used it to get a slammin' deal on cat food. World's most interesting man material there, for sure.

I tried to find a bunch of other sites that are similar to camelcamel... and it seems like if you change things so that you do the best price across multiple platforms you are immediately shutdown by amazon. Is that true?

For example, if you answered this question "Where is the cheapest price to get this item from amazon, walmart, home depot, lowes?"

In my experience, no retailer likes being listed on a comparison shopping site. That is why we stick to a single retailer.

Hey there, I like your site its very useful, but I end up getting a lot of false notifications. Essentially, I'll get an alert the price has dropped beyond its lowest ever, and when I look it's a third party seller whos profile always says "please message me before purchase", from what I've heard those are usually scams. Any plans to weed out these users from third party price watches?

Edit: just saw your blog. I guess leave it to amazon is the answer.

We wish we had the data available to filter out such merchants, but all we have access to is the merchant's name. That is not a lot to go by.

My suggestion would be to track the Amazon price only. We will then alert on any Fulfilled by Amazon / Prime offer, be it Amazon or Third Party. This should avoid the scammers, as they do not bother with FBA.

Hi camelfarmer, I only have one question.

Is it cold there? Perhaps....Icey?

You have earned yourself an upMaynard.

What other applications do you see for the algorithms employed by your software? For instance, sales at the local grocery stores. A shopper could request that an item at several local stores be watched for the lowest price by a given day. Based on bar code info. Anything else come to mind? Remember, you heard it here first?

Anything with non-static pricing where users want a better price than is currently available.

Do yoy have any association with the guys from Crowscrowscrows? Your names are similar.

No but I am a fan of the Adelaide Crows.

What's your relationship with Amazon? I'm aware that you guys are prevented from tracking prices in certain categories, but how extensive is it? Are you able to track any of Amazons special sale prices, or are they all precluded? Can we expect "instant coupon" tracking as well, or is that also off limits? How about the "collectible" book category?

We are regular affiliates like anyone who joins the Associates program. They don't prevent us from tracking certain products or categories, they simply don't list those things in their API. We don't take it personally.

As I mentioned in another answer, I think the coupon and special prices are distinct systems inside Amazon, so that data isn't available in the affiliate API.

We collect "collectible" data but don't publish it, as it seems like it isn't available for the majority of products.

What's the strangest/largest price fluctuation you have seen on Amazon?

The classic example is one in which two auto-pricing bots got into a war of escalation, causing a textbook to eventually be listed for over a million dollars.

Every product I check always seems to have a graph for it, are you literally checking and storing a history for every item? What's the size of your DB?

We don't have a complete list, but we do track all products users discover via search. The last time I looked, our products list was over 40 million.

That took a long time to count.

Why this name?😊

Why not!

On a personal level, what are a few of your favorite films?

Lord of the Rings, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and Big Fish are some I like and would still watch. I really enjoyed Garden State when it came out but don't really get the urge to watch it anymore. John Wick was great and I am looking forward to seeing the second film.

As an economics student, your website offers some pretty interesting data.

On your end, have you looked into creating some sort of demand curve using the alert prices users set? That information seems like it would matter more to amazon than you, which brings me to:

Do to have a working relationship with Amazon beyond just using their data? If so, is it more friendly or adversarial?

*on a personal note, I have fond memories using your website back in high school to buy GBA games, so thank you.

That data does seem like it would be useful to Amazon, or any retailer.

We're just members of their affiliate program. Certainly isn't adversarial.

1.)Can I use this site for amazon.ca too?

2.) Does it ever concern/worry you that your business is entirely reliant on another company and that Amazon can just decide to shut down your business' ability to interact with their site on a whim (maybe make the API private)

Sure can! http://ca.camelcamelcamel.com/

Have you considered forking your code and making a brand new website for other platforms such as home depot, walmart, lowes, etc?

We supported other retailers in the past, but they didn't generate nearly as much interest as Amazon. Hard to dedicate the resources to those when camelcamelcamel uses up all of our time already.

Why are business owners so cagey with their revenue and profit info? If it's good, why not share it?

Why keep any information private at all?