If you every find yourself needing insanely simple SQL reporting for slack, check out my newest side-project, SQLBot.co. It let’s you pump SQL reports right into Slack. You can schedule report, or call them via the slack bot.
So instead of using sp_send_dbmail to send email reports of SQL queries, give SQLBot.co a try.
I got a call at work the other day from someone who had run across the Pickle of the Month blog (of course she thought it was a great idea), and told me about FROZEN PICKLE POPS, made from pickle juice. Seriously. Here’s the link to the website – Bob’s Pickle Pops. What a fantastic idea! I hope Bob does well with his frozen pickle pops. Maybe if these had been around when we started Pickle of the Month, we’d have made the big time.
In other random news, I am helping the company I work for develop a generic domain we own – www.MovingTruck.com. We’ll be initially focusing on helping people find a moving truck, figure out which moving truck rental is the best, evaluate movers, and find cheap moving boxes. We’ve also thought about having reviews on moving trucks and companies, and having people post their funny/horrendous moving stories. Stay tuned! Right now it’s just a placeholder site, but big things are on the way. UPDATE: I now own MovingCompanyReviews.com a site that helps consumers find local movers, like Chicago movers or Orlando movers, and gives moving companies free moving leads.
When I tell people we’re shutting POTM down, people usually respond with, “it’s about time, what a stupid idea anyway, I told you guys you were morons!” Ok, they’re not that harsh, but they do ask how many orders we got. Poking through the database, I’ve tallied the final numbers, here they are:
Total Orders: 81
Total Customers: 64
Percentage of customers we knew: about 50%
Total Revenue: $2700.58
I haven’t run the final numbers on profitability, but we probably came up just short. If we would have sustained our November/December pace, we would have been quite profitable, but the pickle pace slackened in the beginning of the year, and we lost motivation.
Now, on to bigger and better things!
Tears are falling here in Pickle of the Month land. As of 6:07 pm central standard time, Pickle of the Month ceases to exist. That’s right, we shut ‘er down.
In the end, postage killed us. It turns out $9 pickles are just too much to stomach, even if they do tickle the tastbuds, and arrive in delightful green packaging. The $20 price for the 4-month subscription seemed to appeal to a wide range of pickle lovers, but the additional $16 in postage usually killed the purchase in its tracks.
Lesson learned – don’t ignore the obvious.
Looking back, a lack of motivation played a part as well. We started off wonderfully, but as the month dragged on and orders did not take off, we lost our vigor. Not that that’s bad, it’s just a fact of life.
Lesson #2 learned – things become tedious when there’s no light at the end of the tunnel.
I don’t mean to sound too down, the lessons and fun earned from POTM far outweigh the sadness of shutting it down. It’s been the source of bushels of laughs, smiles, lessons, strange looks, and countless other moments of joy over the last year. In fact, it even played a part in me getting my last job, and has opened up a number of doors since. Who would have thought?
Well, that’s enough rambling for this Sunday afternoon. May you always have wonderful, tasty pickles.
Pickliest Regards,
Doug
I am ecstatic to announce our newest foray into ridiculousness – www.CelebrityWakeUpCall.com. That’s right, we want to bring the voice of your favorite celebrity to a wake up call near you.
Until we flesh out a bit more of the site, we’re keeping things on the DL (that’s the down-low, for our older readers). We just have an email sign up right now, which we’ll keep up until launch. What are you wating for go sign up now!
Stayed tuned for updates, including screenshots and general tomfoolery.
Thanks for your patience, loyal blog readers (all two of you). I am happy to report we’re super close to the inital launch of our next set of stupid websites. Check back tonight for more details!
Just wanted to throw a quick post out there letting everyone know we’re still alive. We haven’t posted in a while, because we’ve been working on some top secret pickle projects.
More to come next week.
So I was doing some web research for my real job, and I ran across http://www.squidoo.com. It lets anyone publish pages on whatever they want, and make cash for doing so. Very cool site and idea.
Check out the guide to making sweet beer shirts I made – http://www.squidoo.com/beershirts/
One of the greatest joys of summer in Chicago is sitting at Wrigley field on a warm, sunny, Tuesday afternoon with a hot dog in one hand, and a cold Old Style in the other.
It almost makes our slow sales worries disappear. 🙂
Mike and I are pretty excited to see what kind of response we get for the pregancy pack. We’re hoping that we generate decent enough sales from that to offset the decline in regular pickle of the month subscriptions. I guess we’ll see!
I’ll be the first to admit, I’ve deviated from last week’s preliminary timeline for rolling out our latest product offering and subsequent advertising. If anyone at my new employer happens to be reading this and fears it’s indicative of my abilities as a Project Manager, be not alarmed. POTM isn’t an urgent priority at the moment (while getting up to speed in the new job most definitely is) and the slip was hardly unanticipated. It’s all about prioritization.
I have made some gradual progress though. The staging site has the new product bundle (minus a good picture of a pregnant person – Dubs, I’ll be emailing you shortly to get that last piece taken care of). I also think I’ve identified the last component for the Proud Parent Blast – it’s a bib with a “lil pickle” on it. It’s cute, functional, and the right size for our packaging needs. My initial thought is to resell the one I found online, then create our own version if this proves to be a popular offering (and thus increase our margins).
Pickle sales are what one might label as slow, and by slow I mean Slowsky slow, so we’re hoping the new offering and the incremental advertising pays dividends. If not, we’ll just try something else. Afterall, we’ve got plenty of ideas…
Is this great or what? Combine this with a Big Papa and Hot Mama pickle, and you have yourself baby gift nirvana that’s fun for the whole family.
Pickle of the Month blog 