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FAQ

Frequently asked questions about Model Prices and how the site works. Please write to me if you have questions that aren’t answered here 😀

Who are you and why did you start Model Prices?

My name is Mads Phikamphon. Located in Copenhagen, Denmark. I have a daytime job in programming and in my free time, I’m building this website for finding and comparing prices for all kind of model train products.

Now that our children are getting bigger, my wife and I get more and more free time every day. I have always felt happier having a project than for example watching TV series, so that’s why I started building Model Prices.

Building a price comparison website seemed like the perfect project as it requires a lot of programming + data sorting. Both things being something I love doing ❤️

How long has Model Prices been in operation?

I started the website in August 2022, but I didn’t start with a blank slate. I have been building other, smaller websites before and could reuse a lot of the code from these projects for the initial version of Model Prices.

Almost every week, I tweak and improve the code behind the website. For example by adding new features or by improving the algorithms for finding and sorting prices.

Why did the site change name

If you have used the site from the beginning, you might remember that it used to be called Model Train Prices (instead of the new name Model Prices). I changed the name in April 2023 to prepare for adding other types of models than just model trains.

You can read more about the name change here.

How do I request a feature?

I’m super happy when people email me feature requests. Getting these emails show me that people care about the website and find it useful, so please don’t hold back writing if you miss some functionality on the site. Same if you find an error or something that looks strange.

You can contact me here.

How do you select the shops on the site?

As the site has been growing, I have added more and more shops to the site. Most of the shops have been recommended to me, but I also sometimes get emails from shops asking to be included.

The site has a global focus, so there are shops from ~30 countries so far.

How do you select the products on the site?

My goal is to include all the model train products available 😅 Behind the scenes on the site, there are several algorithms running all the time. When these algorithms detect new products, they add them to the site. Generally new products are added every week.

At the moment, most of the models on the site are new models, but I expect to add more vintage models within a foreseeable future.

How do you collect the data?

I have programmed several bots that run all the time. My bots work much in the same way as the bots Google has running to crawl the internet, so you can search for information in Google. My bots just crawl model train shops instead of the internet in general.

I get most of the data from the bots, but there are also shops delivering data in other ways.

How often do you update the prices?

The bots take care of updating the prices twice a week. They also add new prices and remove prices that are no longer found in the shops.

The update frequency is limited by the size of my server, so the server doesn’t get overloaded. When my budget allows for it, I plan to get a bigger server and increase the update frequency.

How often do you update the stock levels?

For some shops, I’m able to display stock levels. The bots taking care of updating the prices are also the ones taking care of updating stock levels, so stock levels are updated twice a week.

Why are you not showing shipping costs?

My bots collect price data from all the shops. They can do that because the data is structured in the same way for all the prices in each shop (and in some rare, lucky cases in the same way for several shops).

Shipping data isn’t structured, so my bots can’t collect shipping data in the same way as they collect price data. And collecting shipping data manually for 1,880 shops would be an impossible task – especially when you consider that Model Prices is a side project that I run at that the same time as having a daytime job 😲

How does the website make money?

There are a few rare shops that have an affiliate program, but the affiliate income doesn’t even come close to cover my server costs.

Despite throwing money at the website, I feel happy doing it. It feels good building something people find useful.

What models do you run yourself?

At the moment I don’t have any models myself. I used to have some scale Z trains, but it all got stolen when there was a burglary in our basement. When I looked into getting started again, I ended up coding this website instead. Probably also fit better with living in a small apartment 😀

I have been thinking about starting a new layout, but at the moment I spend all my free time building the website. The project has become a lot bigger than I expected when I started out 🙂

How is the website coded?

Model Prices is a standard WordPress installation with the Flatsome theme and a lot of custom code thrown on top of it (in the form of WordPress plugins). Most of the code is PHP + a bit of Javascript. Database is MySQL. Everything runs on a rather large VPS.