Premium Early Access Fan Blog Memberships Available NOW!!!
Do you want same day access to Costco Sales i.e. Monday Sales posted Monday Afternoon, Thursday Sales posted on Thursday Afternoon? NOTE: THIS IS NOT AN OFFER FOR THE COSTCO MEMBERSHIP YOU REQUIRE TO AHOP AT THE WAREHOUSE.
Do you want a new, customizable newsletter so you can personalize your E-mail Updates?
CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP
Hi Everyone!
It is hard to believe that in October, I crossed the 10 year anniversary of posting Costco deals. Back when I started, I was still using a Blackberry Bold smartphone to take pictures in the store. Throughout all this time Costco has been a large part of my life. I really want to make this blog as useful as it can be, but I’ve come to a point where I need your help.
I have now gone from posting once a week, to five times a week! (Monday Sales, Wednesday Seasonal Aisle, Thursday Update, Weekend Update, and Food Reviews) As my commitment to producing more money-saving Costco content increases, I am looking to redesign the website to make it easier to navigate and add some much requested features.
I’m excited to announce that I will now be adding a Premium Early Access Membership option to the Costco West Fan Blog to help fund a professional redevelopment and redesign of the website. The new site will have improved navigation to find relevant sales as well adding as a search function to search for specific items and when they go on sale.
The Premium Early Access Membership will give you early access to all the Sales Posts and Sales Updates. All posts from now on will be available in the afternoon instead of late in the evening.
*** If you don’t want to purchase the Early Access option, the posts will be released for free the following morning at 5:00AM PST. With the Premium Early Access Membership, you will have the easiest and fastest access to all the sales at Costco!
The Premium Early Access Members will also have access to a NEW premium newsletter service which will immediately notify you when updates that are posted AND will allow you to choose which updates you would like to get.
Right now, if you decide to purchase an Early Access Membership and use the discount code “FOUNDERS” before 2020-01-31, you will get $10 off your annual membership AND have that rate grandfathered forever!
REGULAR PRICE: EARLY ACCESS MEMBERSHIP – $29.97 Per Year
This is a great chance to support the site and get a bonus! I especially like that you aren’t taking away anything, just adding something. I use your site all the time and this is a great idea.
Any considerations i had in mind to donate disappeared when i read that you put the ability to reduce spam behind a paywall. I’ll just turn that adblocker back on and just remind myself to check every week.
I’ve been following you since RFD and i’m sure i won’t be missed among your horde of followers but that’s a scummy move and a confusing one. Why would you want to limit the people annoyed by all the reviews and extras? That would just give them more reason to unsubscribe.
Hi Alex,
Thanks for your feedback. The decision to move paying members to a new newsletter service was made as one of many attempts to modernize the blog. The current newsletter is distributed by Google Feedburner. I originally chose this service for my newsletter, for much the same reasons that most people visit this blog – it is free. Unfortunately, Google Feedburner, which still functioning, has not been supported since 2012 and does not give the option for a user to select form a category of E-mails. When I make a blog post, an E-mail gets sent out – no options.
In modernizing the site, I chose to sign up paying members for a premium newsletter service hosted by another newsletter provider; however, E-mail newsletter services are extremely expensive. To convert all my newsletter subscribers over to this new service will cost $379 USD a MONTH. I made a decision to prioritize paying members to test out how the new service works. If I am in a position to switch everyone over to this new service sometime in the future, I definitely will! At this time, switching everyone over to the new service still poses many problems (like requiring positive E-mail consent) which means I will literally get thousands of E-mails asking for support. Currently, this is something I don’t have the time to do right now. My wife already complains how much time I spend on this blog! 🙂
I hope you understand that I do not take any of the changes that I make on this blog lightly and I strive to make everyone’s experience a positive one! Again, thanks for your feedback and I hope to see you back on the blog soon!
I subscribed! I love this blog. A small price to pay in planning my weekly shop.
@Konohamaru’s Friend with snot coming out of his nose
I think your PP and name is quite rude. It’s quite distasteful that it was even allowed since comments must be approved here. But as long as you pay for the membership, I suppose it’s allowed, right?
Moving forward, I need to clarify one thing:
I have spoken to a few Costco managers. Hoarding and professional resellers are quite common at Costco.
A few Costco managers will stop these people in their tracks. High volume requests must go through them first.
Other times, the manufacturer puts a limit on the number available per person to give everyone an opportunity. We see this often with woman’s cosmetic products. Once a sale item is out of stock, it just disappears along with the posted sign in the store.
The point being, *some* managers actually care about giving ALL their customers an opportunity to buy products. The perfect case in point is Bellingham Costco. They have a limit (finally) on the amount of milk you can buy.
I support 100% – have just completed my subscription via Paypal. Thank you and keep up the great work.
^- agree with Gary above.
Love the attempts to monetize further and techie reference w/ the discount code “Founder’s.” The earlier suggestion from someone with a spreadsheet with SKUs and pricing, available to subs would be a game changer perk. If this is done – I’m in. Please let us know!
Hi Derek, I actually tried doing a spreadsheet with the SKUs over the course of a year, but I quickly found that the item numbers change pretty frequently even for the same item. In one year, the same product can have a couple different item numbers, which makes things very hard to categorize! I had to give up on item numbers and just work on a search for manufacturer, brand name, product & price – but even that can get complicated when there are 15 different types of laundry detergent! Don’t worry, I’ll do my best to work something out!
This sounds like a great idea! I’ve used this site pretty much every week since I learned of it. Not only do I make my trip to Costco count, based on your info, but I get $$ back when I see items on sale weeks later!
I’ll be a subscriber for sure.
I will be subscribing to your your annual subscription service. I do appreciate all the hard work you do putting this website together. I believe that this is a big cost and all the time spent you deserve to be compensated.
Thanks again.
I think going with patrion would have been a little easier for us to swallow and not destroy the good will you have accumulated over the years.
Hi Robyn. Will you be launching a free website that offers these services instead? Or does working for free not quite sound super fair and exciting to you?
Destroyed goodwill? How entitled are you?
Agree!
While I doubt you will actually read this I still feel the need to defend myself. Before you start calling people names you might want to actually look up what patrion is. Patrion is a site that you can setup donation tiers to help creators afford to continue to provide content to their visitors. I do not have an issue with him asking for donations to help keep the site running, but that’s not what this is. This is turning into a PAID service and a businesses instead of a community site. I am very sad that it is going that direction and concerned that eventually there will be a paywall.
Hi Robyn, thanks for your feedback! I can promise you that this blog will never be subscription only. My goal is to keep this blog free for everyone. I’ve been doing this for 10 years – so I feel like I can say that my motives with this blog has never been to get rich.
My goal with the paid membership is to put the money back into the site to add some new features like better navigation and an item search. To get this going will require a substantial investment.
I seriously considered Patreon; however, they recently installed a new fee structure that would take 12% of any donation. It also did not allow me to easily integrate any early access features into my blog.
I hope that answers some of your questions!
Lmao, Jon what world do you live in? Do you think these blogs and facebook groups people run, they do it for free out of the goodness of their heart?
Wake up man. They earn money. And there is nothing wrong with it but please shake your head. Blogs need the users to be successful and provide something valuable, not the other way around.
Hi, I wish you luck with this. A bunch of readers probably use Adblock, so I hope there is not much complaining about this. Glad to see that the comments so far have been reasonable.
Regarding hoarders, traders, and overseas traders – If they were going to do that, they would be going to the warehouse themselves in the morning. Not to mention, Costco employees are known to get some of the best goodies themselves (assorted perfume boxes).
First comment here. Happy to support! Your blog has saved me so much time & money over the years I know this will be a valuable small investment. Thank you for all of your hard work and dedication to making this site easier and more useful!
Hi Good morning
How come I want to apply and everything I have fill up but all the sudden the words
pop up “Please enter your card details” I do not know how to fill and I want to click
but cannot clik at all. Please advise
I only go to Costco maybe once a month so a membership for this premium service isn’t really for me .
BUT if Costco ever came to North Vancouver I would be totally for it !
I would be at Costco every week or more haha!
Just can’t face that bridge traffic more then once a month !
I’m sure I’m not the only one who feels this way.
My hope is they put a Costco where Sears used to be and affordable housing above it .
But that’s off topic….
So for now I prefer to click on ads only 🙂
Will there be no ads?
I don’t have the ability to reduce the number of ads in the current format; however, it is something I can look at when the website is redesigned!
Exciting! I really hope there’s an option to download a list of all the sale items (excel or text file).
Will there be an alert function to automatically send updates on watched products (like Camel Camel does for Amazon)?
Might need a tutorial on how to use the new format web site to it’s fullest!!
That is a great suggestion. I’ll make sure to pass it on to the developers!
I appreciate your ambition. I also wish you success with adding an exclusive premium feature.
While many really enjoy Costco, our membership fees are high enough.
Paying for premium advance notice will predominately benefit the hoarders, traders, and professional overseas exporters.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen any of those people you mention at my local stores. It is pretty rare that any of the items I take pictures of are sold out. I can only recall this ever happening in the case of some popular women’s shoe models.