Feature request: "Scheduling funnel"

[Vaguery]

I’m experimenting this quarter with launch/end timing for the books I sell, by spreading launches of new (and ended/restarted) listings over an entire day. This is because I have no real evidence that my launch/end times are “good”, but a huge amount of data showing that people buy my items (long tail collectibles, books) when they launch and end, and almost no other times. Basically, they only see them at the front and back, and can’t see them in the 10 days in the middle.

I also have a huge influx (10000+ items) of new inventory to list, and instead of my habit of immediately starting anything I’ve finished a listing for (meaning: it will launch between 9am and noon local time, when I do that chore), I would like to spread those out, too.

For both of these tasks/tests, what I’d really like to do is have a place (folder, for example) in GarageSale where I drop all the listings I’ve made with Prepared status. Ideally, everything in that folder would be added (in random order, If I were picking) to a schedule and launched every X minutes, forever.

Now I could do almost everything I just described in JS or AppleScript, except that as far as I can tell nothing about the GarageSale Scheduler is scriptable. That is, I could periodically run a script that (1) watches a folder, (2) picks a random (or the next by name, or age, or I honestly don’t care) listing from the Prepared items present, (3) adds it to an existing Schedule, which (4) launches it some time in the future.

This is a pretty niche request, so I suppose I should ask if anybody else might find it of use, before asking for any work to be done on it.

But even without the magic launch funnel I’m trying to describe, I would like to be able to script the Scheduler. I have a few use cases for that.

[vjl]

I would find it useful for a slightly different reason. Items [mostly books/media] that I decided to end and relist in GS, I tend to do after a certain period of time goes by. I don’t mind doing that part manually, as I tend to review what I want to delist/re-list before I do. The issue for me is that I’ve found that delisting stuff and re-listing it the next morning [my timezone], attracts more buyers than just delisting and re-listing immediately.

So for me, being able to schedule the re-lists would be very handy. My normal method is to delist stuff, and while it is selected, hit the re-list button; I keep the launch control window up, and just minimize it to the dock and the next morning, start those listings. Not a big deal, but scheduling is always nicer for me.

[rlmartin]

I use the tag system. I change them to green when I end them and they stay in a (green) smart group for 24 hours until I restart them the next day. After restart I tag them as blue for 24 hours until the next batch is ready the next day.This way I can watch what is going on with the listings for 24 hours after restart.

[Vaguery]

Yes, the tag system is very effective if you’re focused on a minimum delay, but the specific thing I’m investigating this calendar quarter is launch time. I suppose I could use random tagging to “cool off” a pile of listings for X hours, and then drag those into a Schedule to launch them at even intervals over a day or two.

The automation I was looking for is more like: randomize order and spread out everything in this pile. Something that, for example, launches one random unlaunched item from the folder, every X minutes, as long as there are any unlaunched items left.