I got a good and fairly specific question by email a few days ago that provides a bit of a glimpse into the bot’s inner workings with some colorful charts.
Q: I was just wondering when changes to budget and number of items go into effect. I’d assume that the budget changes when the next billing period hits. However I’d assume that keyword changes go into effect immediately (or daily), and I’m not sure when a change to the number of packages would happen (hopefully not until the budget change happens too). Just curious as to when all of these things happen.
A: All these changes get complicated surprisingly quickly.
Keyword changes get implemented once or twice per week, but obviously there is a delay caused by shipping. Packages you get today will probably be based on last month’s keywords.
On your account you can set how many packages you want the bot to buy for each address. Here you are actually setting the bot’s “package preference” for the address, which is a number from 1 to 10. That number tells the bot how long it should wait before ordering another package. The bot uses the below colorful eye charts to figure this out. For example, if you have the slider set dead in the middle and your budget is $30/month the bot will generate a new order every 2.2 days with a target budget of $2.16 per package. If an item is bought for less than the target budget, the bot rolls over the balance to the next package. The slider on the site will read 9-18 packages per month and the bot will aim for 13.9 packages per month. Changing the number of items increases or decreases the package preference, which in turn changes the time between new orders and target budget.
In generating packages the bot only looks at budget changes that have gone into effect. For example, if you set your budget to $0 for all addresses the bot will stop charging you but will keep generating packages until the funds run out.
Increases in your budget go into effect immediately, but you are only ever charged once per month. A pro-rated amount is added to the next billing cycle after you made the change. So if you signed up for $30/month and increased your budget to $40/month halfway through your first month the bot would tack on a $5 pro-rated charge to your next renewal.
Decreases in your total budget go into effect at the next renewal date. The idea here is that someone adding addresses or budget likely doesn’t want to wait to get packages. Usually decreases are cancellations, and in those cases the bot needs to spend the rest of the funds.
