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Free Day Recap
by Nate |
January 07, 2010 |
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"First and foremost, we want to give back. We've had a stellar year in 2009, and it's all because of you. So please, have a beer (or a Stepper Motor Driver) on us."
Did we accomplish this? We think so. This was Free Day's primary goal because our customers are the biggest part of what makes SparkFun work. Their innovation and creativity makes this "world" turn. In our opinion, the beauty of DIY electronics is its openness - this type of technology should be available to everyone to play around with. We thought limiting the promotion to just our prior customers would really be going against this notion. So we opened it up - to everyone. This left some people feeling jilted and some people ecstatic - but overall, we think this was a good thing not just for the people who got their order through, but for the whole DIY electronics community.
"Second: We wish we could sponsor more groups but we don't have a sound way of selecting appropriate projects. Because we can't afford to say yes to everyone, we have to say no to everyone. It pains us every time we have to do it. So this is a way for us to evenly enable all the students and great minds of the world to pickup a $100 worth of free gear. Go for it!"
I think the answer to the first questions answers this as well. We hope we helped a few people accomplish projects they've been dreaming up!
"Third: Free Day will possibly create a maelstrom of site traffic, the likes of which our servers have not seen. At the beginning of December, 2009, SparkFun will be graduating out of its high-chair and moving into a server cluster. We are excited to have the breathing room, and Free Day will help us evaluate just how much breathing room we're getting. We'll do everything in our power to keep the site up but please understand that the site may go down."
This was, of course, more than just a test for our servers - we could've done that virtually and I think anyone who participated in Free Day knows how this worked. Our server went down three times during this ordeal. Once, it really broke on its own (the day before Free Day). Yikes. The other two times, we took it down on purpose before Free Day started to make upgrades we knew we'd need to have even a fighting chance of completing the day. Did our upgrades work? Yes and no. Yes, we were able to finish Free Day. No, it didn't go as smoothly as we hoped. Our site was slow as molasseses. We learned a ton in the IT realm of things and will use that information down the line. We hope in the meantime your F5 key is still intact and functioning.
"Fourth: We turn 7 years old! SparkFun is now over 70 employees and is the ripe old age of 49 (in business and dog years). We'd like to celebrate our birthday with a party."
Was it fun? Sure! But what we are really looking forward to is what comes down the line a week, a month, a year from now. We hope someone out there got a few things from Free Day and will create something really cool, or just start down the path of DIY electronics and get the same enjoyment we do out of this cool stuff.
So now let's look at some graphs and stats!
The SparkFun IRC chat room nearly took down Freenode! We love you Freenode!
Thank you Freenode for hosting our crazy day! We where the busiest chat room on IRC for a few hours today. We beat out ubuntu and debian for a bit.
We peaked the SparkFun chat room with about 2400 users. It was very insane. Graph came from a SparkFun friend who was parsing the user levels.
For a few hours, SparkFun was the number one search term on the internet. Wow. The power of having a friend recommend a site through Twitter, Facebook, email, and everything else is incredibly amazing.
And up there with the Google traffic, Twitter was ablaze! We barely made it onto the trends list for about an hour. We were up there with CES and Nexus One! Wow.
And from Twitter, we discovered some hilarious photos and words of encouragement. Dan submitted this photo. F5 is the refresh button which was widely needed on Free Day as page load times increased significantly.
We received over 2,000 guesses as to when Free Day would expire! The winner of $200 was off by three seconds! Guess: 10:44:44. Amazing!
Fun Numbers:
On Monday of this week, we were up to 33,000 visit, way above our normal average. Tuesday 41,619 - nearly a record for us (record was Free Day announcement of 46,442). Wednesday (we went down twice that day, once on purpose, once because the database broke) we hit 72,047 visits! That's incredible! We knew Free Day was really going to hurt. On Thursday, Free Day itself, we are still waiting for Google Analytics to catch up but it's obvious we will peak over 111,493 visits today we peaked at 169,132 visits. We took the site down once at 8AM to make some last minute mods, but were able to keep the site from completely breaking down. We were effectively under a self-inflicted denial of service attack but pages loaded, albeit slowly! 169,132 visits! Ow it hurt!
We went from 5mbps back in December to 32mbps in January. Necessity is the mother of invention. With load on our servers hitting nearly 10 times anything we've seen before, we learned very quickly how we needed to patch and streamline our site to squeeze every ounce of throughput out of our little e-commerce system. Our site is now running snappier than ever and this is one of the biggest days we've seen in our history. Nice job IT.
Every order isn't going to ship on Free Day, or for a few days after. We've got extra tape guns on hand, but please be patient and give us some time to catch up! We will get every order out but it will take at least a week to get back to our normal shipping speed.
In the end was it worth it? Completely! Either way you slice it, we got $100 worth of goods into the hands of 1,000 new customers and repeat friends. Did we anger people? For sure, but as user "lukeweston" on Twitter so elegantly put it: "This is a bizzare form of nerd torture". We had a blast and hope you enjoyed the excitement and entertainment of the morning. Cheers!
We received over 2,000 guesses as to when Free Day would expire! The winner of $200 was off by three seconds! Guess: 10:44:44. Amazing!
Fun Numbers:
- Total given away: $100,587.80
- Total free day orders: 1,035
- Total units sold: 12,185
- Largest order (before discount): $425.42 (discounted $100.00)
- Smallest order (before discount): $34.53 (discounted $29.95)
- Average order (before discount): $126.73
- Most popular product: COM-00097 (Mini Push Button Switch - 254 units)
- Most products in one order: 153
- United States 803
- Canada 66
- Australia 38
- United Kingdom 27
- Netherlands 18
- France 16
- Germany 13
- Sweden 12
- New Zealand 8
- Finland 8
- Spain 8
- Italy 6
- Switzerland 5
- Singapore 5
- South Africa 4
- Brazil 3
- Portugal 3
- Turkey 3
- Denmark 3
- Sri Lanka 2
- Austria 2
- Belgium 2
- Hungary 2
- Estonia 1
- Iceland 1
- India 1
- Chile 1
- Czech Republic 1
- Mexico 1
- Greece 1
On Monday of this week, we were up to 33,000 visit, way above our normal average. Tuesday 41,619 - nearly a record for us (record was Free Day announcement of 46,442). Wednesday (we went down twice that day, once on purpose, once because the database broke) we hit 72,047 visits! That's incredible! We knew Free Day was really going to hurt. On Thursday, Free Day itself, we are still waiting for Google Analytics to catch up but it's obvious we will peak over 111,493 visits today we peaked at 169,132 visits. We took the site down once at 8AM to make some last minute mods, but were able to keep the site from completely breaking down. We were effectively under a self-inflicted denial of service attack but pages loaded, albeit slowly! 169,132 visits! Ow it hurt!
We went from 5mbps back in December to 32mbps in January. Necessity is the mother of invention. With load on our servers hitting nearly 10 times anything we've seen before, we learned very quickly how we needed to patch and streamline our site to squeeze every ounce of throughput out of our little e-commerce system. Our site is now running snappier than ever and this is one of the biggest days we've seen in our history. Nice job IT.
Every order isn't going to ship on Free Day, or for a few days after. We've got extra tape guns on hand, but please be patient and give us some time to catch up! We will get every order out but it will take at least a week to get back to our normal shipping speed.
In the end was it worth it? Completely! Either way you slice it, we got $100 worth of goods into the hands of 1,000 new customers and repeat friends. Did we anger people? For sure, but as user "lukeweston" on Twitter so elegantly put it: "This is a bizzare form of nerd torture". We had a blast and hope you enjoyed the excitement and entertainment of the morning. Cheers!
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There has to be some way - some form of genius - that would enable you to review groups and their projects/needs for a sponsorship of some kind. I know I've already had to scrap a project now that I've planned for a couple months - because Free Day was one of my only chances at getting even barebones parts to start it.
Even though sparkfun dismissed the idea of allowing only previous buyers to participate I think it would have helped people to get parts for their underfunded projects, on the other hand it would have reduced the awareness of the site and what it is about.
I commend you on your efforts Sparkfun, you don't see too many companies doing this kind of thing.
"First and foremost, we want to give back."
Instead of giving back to the SparkFun community- ie those people that buy from SparkFun and contribute to the forums- we had lots of people jumping onto the site, having never bought or contributed anything. A lot of people that just wanted free stuff- often to resell- got lucky and did so (plenty of twitter comments said exactly that). A lot of the people who contribute and could have used these items- did not.
Worse- instead of just not getting something- people wasted several hours trying to get something. It would have been one thing if they'd just gotten a rejection- you win some- you lose some. Wasting time waiting for an absurdly slow site just offended a lot of people. I didn't experience "sporadic outages" this morning- I got a total outage. The site never once loaded.
YES, I am a previous SparkFun customer, and NO I was not able to complete an order of free stuff. But thats Okay!! Any time that I invested was by my own choice, knowing full well that I may not get an order. Nobody made me do anything.
For those that think it should have been run differently, how about you give away 100k of free stuff to show us how its done? :)
Thank you for the chance Spark Fun!!!
Everyone knew only about 1,000 people were going to get a Free Day order, leaving many people empty-handed. And as much as this was intended to be an act of thanks for existing members, it was very much a genius marketing stunt to acquire new members.
1. Announce Free-day. Some orders will be free, but you won't know until _after_ you've completed the purchase. Only people who would have bought anyway get a gift and the freeloaders don't. This ignores students and others who could use the freebies though.
2. On Free-day- everyone gets 50 or 75% off- up to $100k. Again- it helps avoid the freeloaders who just want to resell- their profits go way down. It's also more palatable for students and others without a lot of money- 75% off is still better than nothing at all.
3. Pick a day at random- anyone who orders _or_ comments in the forums on that day gets $100 coupon (up to $100k). Don't tell people which day. This is more inclusive of students and others who contribute but can't order a lot of stuff.
4. On Free-day randomly select 1,000 people from the registered accounts that have ordered or commented in the last year and give them coupons.
Any one of these would have worked better and resulted in fewer headaches.
What I feel bad about is that there are a lot of people that could have really used some parts, but instead the money went towards resellers and freeloaders.
You seem to have paid a price for your success. I am sure Shawn is not the minority here. There were a lot of people that feel used by SF. Right or wrong, that's a cost.
I now have a pavlovian association of page won't load and SparkFun. Probably not what you were going for.
anyway, if i become a regular tinkerer, i'm sure sparkfun will make their $100 back from me fairly quickly. i suppose i didn't "need" the things i bought, but i didn't see where that was the point.
I realize that Sparkfun has a lot fewer customers- but they also have disproportionately fewer servers as well. They also lack the extensive experience needed to run a high capacity site like this. Honestly- I'd love to read the postmortem for the free-day outages. What failed? Bandwidth? Webservers? Database? What mistaken assumptions were made? Did they expect fewer visitors? Did the server capacity not scale as expected? What could have been done differently? More servers? Smaller images? Streamlined HTML?
Its impossible to weed out all the undeserving people, but make things too strict and you will weed out deserving people in the process.
The point of free-day was supposed to be "to give back to the community." Have you contributed to the community- either by contributing to the forums or making purchases that keep Sparkfun in business? If not- then yes- you should have been denied. Obviously the Sparkfun people seem to feel different. That's their right, of course, but I get the feeling a lot of people feel they were lied to about the real purpose of free-day- and I, for one, do not like being lied to.
In your case you did order something- a few months ago- that would have qualified you for participation. I also suggested several other ways to organize this that didn't require purchasing anything- using forum participation as an alternative.
As for funding projects, whats better than a project competition?
I didnt manage to enjoy the freeday, i wasnt expecting it really, especially because i live overseas.
on the bright side, got my mother to activate my paypal account, so i will be buying from sparkfun as soon as i have figured out how customs work, and my chances of avoiding them.
In case anyone likes to know, they are going to be used in a fairly large wall clock. I want to make the 7-segment displays out of green leds :-)
Thank you sparkfun!
So you're doing a giant 7-segment LED clock made out of single LEDs?
SparkFun: how about doing a new website section called "Free Day Projects", where people can talk about the project they're doing with the Free Day parts, including pictures and videos?
I was at it for two hours from multiple locations and was stuck at the VERY last step before the 100,000 were gone... sigh.
I had it all planned out and I needed 30$ worth of stuff to create my masterpiece.
Now to order it the old fashioned way I guess - but I'm going to wait a while for all these orders to clear first.
But I'll assume that's what you meant, anyway. :-) (I still think SparkFun is awesome and Free Day has only reinforced that.)
I am not sure what the ISP does when it is getting more bandwidth then will fit down the pipe. It may just drop the packets altogether. That would make sense for those timeouts, as the server probably never even saw the request. That would also explain why the guys that hit F5 constantly had better luck, because some of the request must have finally made it through.
What a frustrating experience and I'm so embarrassed that I told so many people and then nothing worked out for them.
Good to see that 7 other New Zealanders got their orders in as well :)
Cheers SparkFun, you've given me my first Arduino!!
As for the complainers, shame on you. Please recognize that not only was this a promotional event for SparkFun, but it was also a means of giving back to the community.
SparkFun is #1 forever :)
While I didn't catch any free stuff it was a great event, thanks for giving us all the chance. It was instersting to hear the buzz around the globe as it happened too.
Best regards,
Colin
It is unfortunate that there are those who would take advantage of this generous offer to make a quick buck off it. Wonder how many Arduinos will be up on ebay this coming week?
Nice move I guess!!!
Congratulations!
Congrats to SparkFun, Happy Anniversary, and thanks for the awesome day!
P.S. The guesses graph link has an extra http in it.
Despite the comments on twitter and elsewhere, the servers were obviously not dead. With that many attempts for HTTP/S connections, the servers were never going to be snappy for everyone.
Give Sparkfun a break - they did a good thing for over 1000 enthusiasts like you and I, and that can only benefit us all. Hopefully those who took advantage of the offer will 'pay it back' by documenting their projects online for everyone to benefit. I know I will.
Dragonfli I agree it is sad that people are going to resell some of the items.
Disappointing to those who didn't get stuff and probably deserve it, but; such is life, I guess. :(
I should have thought of that this morning. :)
I finalized my cart yesterday, but this morning some items I had removed were back in. I thought that was interesting--reaaaally slow responses to previous add to cart requests? Or the database getting mixed up somehow?
Thanks in any case!...I didn't get any free stuff, but it was fun to watch and I have some well-researched project ideas now, just have to save up a little longer.
It seems after $100,000, their store should be almost totally empty on stock cuz I dont think they had that much $$ in stock listed on their site anyway at least not the popular stuff people want.
My order is going to DigiKey or Mouser for this time.
I'm frustrated but that's not the reason ... I won't wait for more than 1000 to be packed before my order is prepared.
After things come back to normal situation, I'll be back for next orders.
Best regards.
That sums it up. So does the upbeat tone of your message. You guys really dropped the ball and there is no white washing it.
Seriously you guys need to stick to embedded stuff if you think that was a nice job. Do you realize that most people could not access the main page much less place an order. I suspect the only orders that got in were logged in and had a full cart way before the thing started.
You may have made 1000 customers happy or one in every 70 that tried to get in.
Nice job?
I'm still totally amazed at how poorly implemented this spectacle was.
Wow. Just. Wow.
Actually not the case and...I had a full cart, logged in and have been a customer for several years...it wasn't a favorites game......it was just luck...
1 in 70 is actually pretty good compared to how Amazon fared when they initially put the Wii on sale, and they have so much capacity that they sell the excess to others.
If Sparkfun ever goes to something like EC2 for their hosting, they should try this again... :)
Time for a spot of window shopping now your site's back up!!
Over on the piclist forum there is an incredible amount of wanking about not getting FREE STUFF. And most of those doing the wanking are people with good paying jobs. Well, don't let the door hit you in the ass on your way out, wankers!
This major 'give back' to the community was top notch. I hope Sparkfun reaps many benefits. I'm a long time customer and enjoy getting access to amazing amounts of amazing stuff. I ESPECIALLY like that they post schematics of almost everything they sell.
For the record: I did not participate as I can well afford these toys.
I was mad, but then I read on and realized I was by far NOT the only one.
Think you could maybe have free day once a month? :P
I as amazed that I even got some pages to load. Almost got to the end too. Oh well, it was fun playing.
Thanks, it was one of the best web events I've seen in a while.
To those who weren't able to get an order in: That's a bummer, but there wasn't enough for everyone, and we all knew that going into this thing. It still sucks, but I would humbly suggest that you spend your energy innovating instead of complaining. Show us what you can do *without* $100 of free parts. Be awesome.
Well this was one way of increasing sparkfuns popularity, not sure about there reputation...
Should have just offered free shipping or a 25% off coupon or something for everyone. At least that way people who were really gonna use the stuff would have gotten it.
I only stumbled upon sparkfun but you have now won a loyal customer. My girlfriend also tried but was unfortunately unable to get through. We both still had a blast though and really appreciate the fact that you guys did this for your customers.
To all those out there that are angry that they were not able to get through, that was of course to be expected. Short of Google there is really no way they could've handled the kind of traffic that $100 worth of free electronics creates. Just think that the simple fact that they did this is amazing in today's world and hey, who knows, maybe there'll be a repeat =D.
In short, congrats and THANK YOU ^_^
An idea for next time? (if you ever do this again) Have a special off-site page, where the first 1000 people to login with SparkFun user names get a $100 discount code for use at checkout. A unique, one-time use number, usable on any order, say, from 24-72 hours later ONLY. That lessens the loading on the server for anyone who is willing to PAY for orders, and it also helps to reduce overall delays and traffic issues.
Not having gotten the $100 just means it's going to be quite some time before I can afford to start on any of the exotic projects I had in mind. Congratulations to those who DID get through...anyone who is planning to resell their free stuff to make a quick buck? You're a loser.
Your checkout process really should have been on another server. There are various ways to pick who gets to checkout but I mean, letting everyone? That's crazy and very frustrating. Sure there is a scramble to get stuff into carts and click on checkout, but why allow everyone trying to checkout battle with the same traffic? Makes no sense.
Also, as a new customer during the checkout I was prompted to make a new account. Once I did, I was redirected back to the home page...got to be kidding me! Considering that each click cost me another 15 minutes, making me click on the cart and checkout all over again was awful, and the final nail in my already slim chances.
Great idea, bad execution. In terms of success? Need to set the bar higher.
This is my opinion, and I entitled to have it. Sparkfun has joined the league of evil companies with PR stunts like this.
"
To everyone that feels that they were burned, all I can say is this:
Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!
SFE gave away a hundred thousand bucks' worth of goodies to over a thousand people in less than two hours, and made it VERY CLEAR how it was going down, -including- warning that traffic would be a nightmare. There was no prerequisite requirement such as being an existing customer, only the thrill of the hunt and the very real possibility of coming up empty-handed, which I among a myriad of others did. Am I upset about it? Nope, still gonna order some goodies from here because I use the crap outta Arduino Pro Minis and SFE's Arduino-fu is exceptionally strong.
Anyone that still have the colossal gall to be upset because they didn't get something for nothing needs to go outside and interact with something other than a computer for a while.
In short, if you're whining like a tired toddler because you didn't get some freebies, get over yourself.
"
Second, I did not ask you if you feel upset by it, or if you are going to buy from sparkfun in the future, nor did i even mention if i was Going to buy from sparkfun again, so why are you talking about it? You seem to ramble a lot about nothing to do with my statement of my opinion.
Third, you make no attempt to diffuse my argument. The first bold statement in this post is "give back to our costumers" not give away to anyone that can sign up, yet that's what they did. This was not a "Free-day" it was a lottery, an i would have been ok with that if it's how SFE tried to pass it off as.
Second, too many people are acting like they were personally insulted because they could not get freebies. That's just dumb no matter what the excuse. If you're a sad panda because you wasted two hours hitting F5, I repeat the sentiment to get over yourself, as you probably waste more time than that F5ing other sites.
Third, you -did- see that they had, as a goal of the project, a desire to small-scale-sponsor the DIY community as a whole, not solely their customer base, did you not? Looks to me like they achieved that goal to an extent, win-and-resell lamers notwithstanding.
Could SFE have done this differently? Sure, and I'd think a lottery where people submit their E-mail and physical addresses for a chance at one of 1,000 $100 credits may have been the more friendly way to do it, but that wouldn't have given them the kind of load test they might have been looking for to satisfy goal #3. That said, I don't see how SFE could have been any more transparent about the reasoning, goals, and concerns surrounding their promo.
I'm ok with what happened today. Sparkfun wanted to test their servers, and they did so by treating us like dogs. They threw a few "free" steaks out and watched us fight over them without regard to who actually got the biggest piece. I am also ok with this, i mean, it worked didn't it?
What i am upset about is the fact they still continue to claim "they wanted to give back". This is BS. There are ways to give back without upsetting current and future customer.
SFE got there servers Load tested (and some PR) today by dangling a few steaks in front of their customers (like we were dogs) yet are still trying to claim "we did it for you". I find it hard to believe so many don't have a problem with this.
Thanks for putting this on though guys!
Right now, most are without, and feel like they wasted their time and energy. I suggest sparkfun not attempt this again, because I know of a few customers they've lost already. People are talking, and letting server functionality determine a random payout is unprofessional, it's also disrespectful and belittling to the client- ie; just bad customer service. If you're going to offer something, knowing that it's random in nature, be sure to play that up, not make it sound like a given to anyone involved.
Just calling it "free day" implies that you're giving away free parts all day, to everyone, while 'lucky discount day' is really a better term for it.
Yep, I hoped since thanksgiving, and got nil- and yes, I'm not happy my time was wasted instead of just being outright turned down. That's very disrespectful towards me, the customer. I would never dream of torturing a client in such a manner.
Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!
SFE gave away a hundred thousand bucks' worth of goodies to over a thousand people in less than two hours, and made it VERY CLEAR how it was going down, -including- warning that traffic would be a nightmare. There was no prerequisite requirement such as being an existing customer, only the thrill of the hunt and the very real possibility of coming up empty-handed, which I among a myriad of others did. Am I upset about it? Nope, still gonna order some goodies from here because I use the crap outta Arduino Pro Minis and SFE's Arduino-fu is exceptionally strong.
Anyone that still have the colossal gall to be upset because they didn't get something for nothing needs to go outside and interact with something other than a computer for a while.
In short, if you're whining like a tired toddler because you didn't get some freebies, get over yourself.
But I'm not going to go find another hobby because I didn't get some free stuff, nor do I consider a failure to get free stuff to be a crushing blow to the spirit. Some folks here are reacting as though SFE kicked their puppy down a flight of stairs, and that's just ridiculous IMO.
But meanwhile, I still stick to my original statement. This wasn't 'free day' it was 'perhaps your lucky day'. Playing it as "fill up your shopping cart!" is really giving the wrong impression and really bad customer service. A little caution is needed in order not to alienate your client base, which has been done.
And above all, it's not the 100 bucks anymore- it's the disrespect shown to total strangers.
They didn't misrepresent anything. Sorry you had some preconceived ideas that it didn't live up to but thats solely on you.
It was professional. There was a clear "You are not a winner". Either you got your order in or you didnt. You did take part and had just as big a chance as the next person.
As I said before, sorry this didnt live up to YOUR preconceived notions.
I can afford to buy components and do spend $100s every few month for part so not getting the $100 of free stuff won't stall my projects but I for one will never make a purchase because of what we experienced today.
Assuming the slow load times were anticipated, and I'm not sure they were given previous write-ups about the new servers, there might be fewer complainers if the potential experience ("you'll have to sit and hit reload quite a bit") were explained up front. Back in the day, people understood that "the first 10 callers" contests involved a lot of busy signals and redialing, but only after they played a few.
No doubt the length and engagement level of the event made it quite sticky from a PR perspective--and sincere kudos for that--but a better game would have a more positive non-winner experience.
That's exactly the case. This was billed as a "it'll be slow, but it's first come first serve" situation. This was NOT first come first serve but, in fact, completely random. If it was advertised as "This will be random, it has nothing to do with when you click the "checkout" button, the servers will NOT process you in first come first serve order" then I'd have no problem with this whatsoever. If it's a lottery, then tell us it's a lottery. We're not complaining that we didn't get free stuff, we're complaining that you misrepresented what this actually was.
i sat on the cart page and i clicked the checkout button a couple of times, order never went through, i will be uploading some videos to youtube very soon about what happened on my end of the line, and for those who got it to work, here is what actually happened to the less lucky,.
the youtube channel is
led235
i will have the videos on before the nights end.
feel free to comment as well,
but hey, sparkfun did have success, so oh well
Hopefully you'll do this again sometime with some much beefier hosting backing it up.
It needs to be an entirely different game!!!
I can't write much without getting sarcastic so I'll just leave it short. It will be interesting to see in the next few months how this effects you guys: if the negative PR will hurt you in any way or if the newly generated publicity will more than offset it. I will be staying tuned - its the best geek soap opera on the net...
I called in after 20 minutes to see if it was still going, and to my surprise it was. Basically this was a kind of lottery. I got mine after 40 minutes of mouse clicking. The slow servers made it more of a winnable challenge. I hope Sparkfun nets an eventual positive on this due to publicity.
Before I embark on a little constructive criticism (of which I am sure you heard enough by now) comes the more important praise: GREAT IDEA! Thank you guys! My order didn't make it but non the less I had the same chance as the others. THANK YUO SPARKFUN!
Now don't let the following remarks get to you. You still did more then most other companies but I have to say:
1.) Advertisement is good but real charity does without publicity
2.) Organisation was poor. Why not make it a whole freeday, throw every order of that day in a lottery and give people who don't win the chance to take their order back. Maybe in advance by a checkbox or something.
3.) Sell stuff for PBC fabrication ;-)
Still greatfull you did it. Yeah, Sparkfun!
Next time, please make a lottery, at least we won't have to spend hours for nothing clicking refresh every 30 sec.
bah.
I think they definitely should have made the offer available only to customers who had previously purchased something from them (perhaps over a certain value or before the announcement was made) because the whole deal was ruined by leaches from those big deal websites and a lot of actual customers were left struggling in vain.
Given the geek nature of the site, I was expecting to face scripted snipers purchasing all the free within a few minutes. I was surprised to get through at all, even having prepared in advance.
How many of you complaining would have spent $100 if it wasn't free? Go buy a lottery ticket and complain to them when you don't win.
As for PCBs and other complete working solutions/products they are cheaper over all than you creating it yourself or getting it else where such as bluetooth or GPS modules.
The people that were pissed because they spent 2 hours trying to login, should stop complaining, Thousands of people were more ready than you, and regardless of how the servers worked you never would have been one of the first 1000 when you needed to still login an hour before the show started, I started to get on and get to the checkout page 3 hours before it started and I got there, but still didn't get anything.
You also could have given up at anytime and gone back to work, anyone that is smart enough should have realized 20 minutes in that it could take a couple hours for this thing to finish up.
Stop complaining people, no one forced you to try and get a free $100, and you could have stopped at anytime, so it wasn't sparkfun's fault.
Right here on Sparkfun, they said "there will be timeouts." But I loaded a BlueSMIRF Gold and some USB BT dongles into my cart to the tune of $98 and hit "Checkout" at 11:00:03 EST, and refresh x 200. I was sitting at my computer anyway, working on something else. Didn't cost me more than a few minutes of actual activity to try.
If Sparkfun had installed infinite server capacity, a thousand people with pre-loaded carts (like mine) would have had their orders placed within the average time it takes a human to quickly complete the order process... what, two or three minutes?
Free Day would have been Free Three Minutes.
And all that extra capacity installed just to support Free Day would never be used again. I think the folks who didn't know that sparkfun.com was going to slow to a crawl today just weren't paying enough attention.
If you don't like butting heads with people who want free stuff, don't do it. We all know how it goes, always and forever. I almost never choose to participate because it always goes off like this.
VERY UNPROFESSIONAL!!
4.) Give every one who posted here a little gift on their next order. The will stop whining. Also they are the people who really care about you and won't resell.
Are there really resellers? It's just sad an plain stupid.
Well, no surprise when the doors opened it was a total virtual chaos. It was just the blind luck of the internet draw to determined who got in. It certainly wasn't those who showed up at the start time. The home page loaded exactly twice in 45 minutes and I never got to the shopping cart.
What started out as a reward to the loyal customers, turned into a lottery with most people holding a losing ticket. It sure doesn't make me want to click the buy button after I can get into the website (only after the free stuff was gone) from my shopping cart.
Next time, offer something like 50% off up to a total of $200 for the whole day. This scales much better. This how everybody else does promotions.
Also, this was a pretty brilliant way of spending 100k. You got a huge amount of interest, performed the ultimate stress test on your server, and, best of all, made 1,035 people very happy.
I would have still loaded my cart last night, had my account ready by virtue of the fact that I already have an account, and I still would have checked out the second my time-server-synced clock clicked over past 11:00 A.M. EST. So would tens of thousands of other people.
I really don't understand the desire to vastly increase the rate at which a finite inventory amount is given away to a tiny fraction of the people who want it.
Yes, it would have saved you some time. So would noticing the buzz to likely winners ratio and just not bothering to try :-)
As for those who think that it was poorly executed, let me tell you it wasn't. Sparkfun isn't made to take this many visitors at once (10x the normal). To put it in therms that the technically illiterate can understand: imagine you sometimes have 5 family members stay at your house (a brother and his family, maybe). Then imagine that you got 50 people staying over on a night. Just like you, your toilets would be spewing ****.
If, like me, you didn't get anything then you shouldn't be complaining. Nobody made you participate, it was just your selfishness that made you think you would, and complain about it afterwards.
Thanks Sparkfun for doing something completely different. I enjoyed the rush.
In the future, get more servers or more bandwidth, whatever was the problem this time around. It seems that the database queries were taking forever. I look forward to your next day of giving back to your customers, because I'm staying one.
Well, no surprise when the doors opened it was a total virtual chaos.
That's exactly what I had in mind when I heard about Free Day. I'm a bit surprised at the number of people who didn't expect it to be a virtual trampling with a high ratio of empty-handedness to success :-)
Thank You again
Brian
I liked the stats. I would like to see some stats about people like me. I purchased about half an hour after it ended. I clicked refresh for about half an hour, and then went to lunch (east coast). I did not get the free $100, but I ordered anyway.
I did drop 2 things from my cart, but that was because I still intend on donating $100 to the local Humane Society in the name of SparkFun.
Good Job folks; you rock.
My point is treat it for what it is, a big publicity stunt that may or may not pay off.
- people reselling on e-bay are sociopaths.
- free day would have been over in seconds if servers had been infinitely fast: expect to lose either way.
- brilliant advertising
- Will you guys make enough money in the next week to cover free day, by virtue of people who didn't get the discount placing smaller orders ?
- Sounds like you should see if you can fund a small sponsoring program for poor college students ( submit schematics, cartoons, get X dollars in Free ? )
- got in at the end (10:44). I was watching the little progress bar advance the whole time wholly expecting disaster. I will now be able to make a prototype for a new do-it-yourself. I usually dumpster parts, and I am grateful for this (less bleeding and snow involved, (besides, where am I going to get a boost converter in the trash (though I did find a nice little MIDI board the other day))?).
- Free day went exactly as expected and exactly as advertised. It is unfortunate that some people had higher expectations that were dashed.
/2¢
If you're making $50/hr and you want to spend 2 hours to get $100 of SparkFun merchandise, that would have been pretty easy to do last week.
FYI for next year, maybe you should just give away free Arduino's, or Mega's. That way you could get more people in on Freeday & you would get a boost in additional sales on the sensors & accessories. Sort of like how printers are given away to generate cartridge sales. I bet the profit from the resulting sales would offset a big chunk of the promotion cost. Possibly enough that it would be feasible to have two or three Freedays every year!!!
Think about it... microprocessors are like drugs for nerds; Once they get a taste, they only want more & more!
Speaking like a guy who got the deal. Where exactly is advertised as 2 hours of torture. May not be fun for the winners to watch but I would say most would expect it to either be lucky or not in a relativly painless way.
SparkFun was simply taking advantage of thousands of people for financial and internet status benefit.
I wouldnt be surprised to see that someone finds their tactics were illegal in some sense and get taken to court over it.
You have got to be kidding me. Sparkfun didn't take advantage of anyone. If you really use your brain & think about it... Sparkfun is a business, and the primary purpose of a business is to make money. One necessary evil involved with running a business is advertising. So if Sparkfun has to spend advertising money to keep their business in business; what use of that money provides the most benefit to the customers? Paying advertisers for ad-space or giving away free stuff. Hrm... tough call
it's almost like they're in it for the money as well as the fun!
SparkFun: thanks for an entertaining time. The IRC channels were a hoot. :)
i think most of all you have proven that the "Free" concept works. You might have given away 100K USD wort of stuff. but in return you got so much exposure and brand recognition worth millions of dollars in advertising. This will be a textbook example of good internet viral marketing.
I guess 2010 will be a massive year for you. you have just became (internet) world reknown. congratulations.
also nice to see many first time arduino and electronics user.
You guys rock :)
This comment pisses me off just as much as the other people. Some of us are full time students and don't have the time nor the money to buy nice things. Nor do we have the $100/hr wage that you high and mighty people have.
People were complaining that their time was so valuable and the time they wasted in front of the computer hitting refresh could have been spent elsewhere.
The OP was making the point that if their time was so insanely valuable, they could have afforded to miss out and made a purchase at a different time. Additionally, the time they spent refreshing the site is nothing compared to the money they would be making off of their valuable time later, and a little time lost isn't a humongous deal.
The OP was not implying that everyone makes tons of money, I certainly don't, but I still spent 2 hours this morning hitting refresh and hoping. Not expecting. It was fun.
Reading these posts, it seems that what bothers many folks is not knowing why some got orders through, and others not (mine did not): the rate of orders increased very quickly near the end, so something was working better and better, but there was no feedback on IRC as to what was going on. For example, the page said "hitting F5 won't help", but some posts make it seem like it would have. I had exactly one page load in the two hours, despite starting with a full cart, all info, etc., and was frustrated not at the fact that my order didn't go through, but that I didn't know why it was working for others.
Again, nice job, especially in preparation, and way to pull things together to even get through it!
Connection Reset
Connection Timed Out
I never did get my order though, but I'm not angry at all. What SparkFun has done is great. They're a pretty small company from what I understand, and to give away... just give away $100,000 worth of stuff astounds me! That's a lot! A whole lot! It was a very generous thought that will provide many with the tools and parts to come up with tomorrow's 'gotta have' item.
I'm really happy SparkFun.com had this, and glad that many people got stuff they've probably been eying for a long time, but never wanted to pull the trigger because of the expense. Maybe some people wanted to stock up on a bunch of LEDs, or maybe they're making a really neat LED cube.
In any case, great job SparkFun! You've benefited so many, and your prices are always great. Your employees seem spirited, and you put some of the Spark and Fun into my life.
Regarding the issue of sponsoring projects; why not have a competition? It seems doable with a minimal amount of resources. i.e. Write up/post contest specs... contestants email entries in... Sparkfun staff picks top 20... drop some poll/voting code on the site... members vote... winner gets freebies for their project... and Sparkfun gets some more content in the form of a detailed writeup on the winner's project.
I had my cart ready to go, I was up at 6:30 SF time,I was going to get this! But every time I tried to get on, the site did not time out, it did not give blank pages, all it did was flat out refused to connect, connection refused, server reset loop, for 3 hours.
When I was able to get logged in, most of what I had in my cart was replaced with random items.Well by then the event balance was well over 70k so no chance in hell for me.
Congrats on clearing out 100 grand of stuff right before tax season, and letting 40% of this event wind up on ebay.Also thanks for nothing, When we needed you, you opted to let every ebay leech and 1 time freebee hunter artificially inflate your numbers for 1 day.
I will not be recommending or visiting SF any more, NOT! because "i didnt get my free swag" but it gave me more insight to the "little effort as possible to make a buck, from anyone dumb enough to let us" attitude that appears in most aspects of SF.
From the questionable quality of the items, to the drag ass shipping response time.
your welcome
So says my PIC development board. And my homebuilt 4000+ point breadboard with ATMega328s all over it. And the AVRICE mark-two on my desk. And the copies of MikroPascal, WinAVR, AVR Studio, etc. etc. etc. on my computer.
uCs are geek crack. Stay away, lest ye be hooked!
I am very disappointed on how this was all planned out. And I keep wondering if this really did "give back to the community" in a meaningful way and not a huge publicity stunt.
Congratulation to the people who did get the freebies. I will be turning my business back towards Digikey and Robotshop.
Yes, this did give back to the community. There are other people in the community than just you.
And there must have been better ways to give back to the community... Free classes in impoverished schools, random contests with applications or bursaries. But I guess those don't give enough publicity...
Dude, how long have you had a SparkFun account? 15 minutes?
Apricat: And there must have been better ways to give back to the community... Free classes in impoverished schools, random contests with applications or bursaries. But I guess those don't give enough publicity...
If you'd been around here for more than just Free Day you'd know SparkFun does stuff like this: https://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/news.php?id=299
Don't complain that they're not giving anything back when you're one of the people who just showed up for a handout.
"*&@W%^"
5 seconds later...
"%^#H#! let me buy stuff!"
....
Thank you for giving us a chance. Thank you for having a great site for electronics hobbyists.
I have bought from you in the past and will continue to buy from you in the future, but you'll have to wait till after tax season to get my monies.
While I can recognize the great publicity generated from this event, maybe next time just do a sale or something... Thats how I was planning on treating it. 30%-50% off and spread over a week would be awesome.
/$0.02
I'm very dissapointed.
From Barcelona
You know, I had been carefully choosing the items in my cart for a couple of weeks. Things I hadn't bought before, because I didn't flat out need them. But this allowed me to find some things that I might want, like a ClocKit and MetroGnome to build with the kids, hey that might be fun to get them into electronics. And now I'm sad I didn't get what I've worked myself into needing. So I might go ahead and order them in the future, because now I need them.....
Good free scheme I think, to cause customers to translate wants into needs, if they don't get it for free.
But whilst I'm very grateful that I won, I still think the way this was executed was totally brainless. I don't think it's fair to say people are annoyed just because they didn't win free stuff. Rather, people are (rightly) annoyed that the promotion was so badly planned and executed.
Surely it wouldn't have taken much effort to think of some other way to run the promotion that was faster and fairer. Some sort of lottery perhaps? And that didn't DDoS the servers such that even people who were willing to pay full price weren't able to get through to the site for the best part of the day.
Honestly, I think Nate should pay more attention to the sentiments of people posting here. It's pretty insensitive of him to pretend the event was a total success when, in reality, it was carried out so poorly.
I mean, hey, I managed to get through and even I'm annoyed. And I'm an existing SparkFun customer, too. Doesn't speak well for keeping your customers happy, does it?
What about a lottery with staggered entries/draws? What about (as someone suggested) a competition where people submit ideas and the best ones are drawn. What about distributing giveaways through schools and colleges?
Whether or not this would have generated as much publicity for SparkFun I have no idea. But it sure would have been a much more professional way of doing things, and caused way less annoyance for people.
It really doesn't take too much effort to think of a dozen better ways this could have been done. So I think apologies are in order for a poorly planned schmozzle rather than SparkFun patting themselves on the back.
Can someone call the wambulance...we have someone have entitlement seizure.....
Oh and guess what... The event was not poorly planned, IT WAS A LOTTERY! It was a TCP/IP lottery. TCP connections were accepted at random (or close to it). Surely you aren't proposing that all the successful orderers connection's had some sort of priority over everyone else?
Maybe next year Sparkfun can make an HTML page available for users to download & use in their browsers as the default for HTTP 408(Timeout) & 503(Service Unavailable) status codes. Make it say "Sorry you didn't win this time, please try again!" Perhaps then some of these grumpy people would realize its a sort of TCP/IP lottery game, and not a big conspiracy against them.
But that isn't the point... I am sure that a project/design competition with 100000usd of prizes (for example, the competition pays for up to (100000/number_of_winners)usd of your parts) would be a much more positive experience (for /all/ involved... I don't think I've ever seen anyone really that angry after not winning a design competition, due to the learning experience, etc.) than some mindless lottery. The difference is, a very small portion (presumably none) of those who get the prizes would resell them, and you wouldn't waste 2+ hours trying to "win" something randomly. It would support a lot more of said "broke students" who need to buy parts for a design project.
I didn't get the free order, but I wasn't disappointed by this (100usd isn't so much if you are in $10000+ of loans for school), but rather by the sheer mindlessness of the event.
ISP might have significant impact though...
yeah, i think isp has something to do with it
Props to SparkFun, I think that this was a great idea, you guys rock!
Man, I've been dreaming about this for a while. Oh well, I guess I'll try to scrape up another $100, and wait 'till after robotics season.
Thanks, anyway, it's still cool you did this. I hope Andrew was able to get what he wanted...
Very nice :)
To the whiners, how about you pony up $100K in free goodies!
Next time, maybe just a student discount? 10% for college students and %15 for high school students. They could fax/pdf/email their school ID's?
Secondly, please don't use gray text on a white background. How can you be so nice as to give hardware away, but then so mean on my eyes?
This was an incredibly fun/frustrating event. If it had just been some random coupon for 75% off, free shipping, or basically anything other than what they did, Free Day would have been another generic promotion.
Sure some 100,000+ people didn't get anything, simple math told all of us that $100 out of $100,000 is only going to be about 1,000 orders. And in fact they were cool enough to let orders roll over that limit.
As my favorite twitter post of the day said:
"synthemesc: i wonder if anyone would have liked it more (or complained less) if @sparkfun free day took 25 seconds instead."
My personal journey was much more fun, I woke up 3 hours early this morning to start my day, drink coffee, wake up, so I could be ready. I rode my bike to work at 7:15 in the morning so I could make sure I was all set up. And then I joined the reloading maddness both on sparkfun.com
And Twitter was more fun and useful than it had ever been before, it was incredible to watch as everyone shared their collective experiences/heartache at making it though the checkout pages. We were all going though the same thing, without being trampled in the entryway to a Wal-Mart or standing in the freezing cold.
SPARKFUN you made my day! And while I am not going to buy my $100 bucks of stuff today, you did give me a few hours, a few days, and a few weeks of imaging all the cool things I would do with that $100 of geeky fun.
Congrats on "Free Day" it was a success.
Glen McKnight
You need to make the products worthless for reselling. For example, engrave something on them. It could be the buyer's SparkFun account name, their password, or their billing address. Maybe cause some *cosmetic* damage to the parts. Regardless, people who want to make projects shouldn't care.
What do you guys think? I would love to see it happen again without all the people that don't know even know what solder is.
I was hoping to get stuff that I'll never pay for. Some things would just be cool to play with, but I can't justify the cost. I'm ordering a bunch of components anyway, from whatever the cheapest reliable seller is. The GPS module won't be on the list though.
Thanks guys, the atmosphere really was fun (especially the day *before* Free Day, hehe).
That said, I now only have one choice, I'll just buy the $100 cart I intended to get for free :D
i sat on the cart page and i clicked the checkout button a couple of times, order never went through, i will be uploading some videos to youtube very soon about what happened on my end of the line, and for those who got it to work, here is what actually happened to the less lucky,.
the youtube channel is
led235
i will have the videos on before the nights end.
feel free to comment as well,
but hey, sparkfun did have success, so oh well
VIDEO OF A FAILED ATTEMPT IS ON YOUTUBE!!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vs0-2fpL2n4
As I have already said on my previous comment, the parts I bought will serve to build a USB solar charger, to finish a robot and to toy with a serial graphic lcd.
Well if it was not for free day, I would have been able just to buy the robot parts, which I will split the cost with my friend.
Thank you SparkFun, I will always think of buying from you when I don't find parts in my city, well I already did that before, anyway...
Thanks sparkfun for the fun day! Can't wait to play with my new robo-pal!
I'm curious - what were some of the more popular product. The most popular was the LEDs, but only one person ordered them. What was the most popular by distribution of orders rather than quantity? It's still showing 11 of the robot I ordered in stock, but I thought it would be one of the more popular items.
Also, sometimes the main HTML page loads, but, say, the CSS file, or some other media times out, then the page gets pretty crippled, and you have to refresh.
Though, I'm sure a ton of people were doing it excessively.
I was using firefox and whenever I refreshed the status bar would say "Connecting" which I believe indicates that my browser is awaiting an acknowledgment that my request was recieved. So what I did was keep hitting refresh until it said "Connected" which I believe indicates that a TCP acknowledgment was received from the server saying it got my request. At that point once the request is sent and acknowledgment is received then the TCP connection is open and SHOULD be ok (aside from being bogged down by all the other people trying to initiate a conversation with the server, hence the 10 min page loads you mentioned). Now that TCP conversation is only 1 request to the server, so I had to go through 3 or 4 of those to get all the way thru order confirmation.
I just had an interesting thought though... if everything past the cart page were done in AJAX, users could potentially have had a better experience. ie. even if the ajax request failed the cart page would still be displayed (less frustrating then error pages) and errors could be handled in the javascript
I'm a bit bummed, I could have used those components for my ham radio projects, but that's the way it goes. I'll just have to save my pennies for another day.
I'll be back... :)
a rich guy would go one day before and buy all he want in 5 minutes while I took 2 hours to get my page on the choose shippment method and than get an error...that because I had make my cart before the site lags, like 2 am MST or something...
sparkfun did upgrade on their servers but everyone lagged... the site was very very laged and that shows there were a lot of people trying to buy but in 5 minutes noone got any order... and I believe if there were no lag, the freeday would end like 10-11 am MST or something...
you know, that was the best way for sparkfun to get more famous if that was possible... congratulations for those luck guys (3 from brazil, my country)...
also for the guy who got the bet stuff :P
Even though my order didn't go through, I think this was an amazing offer. You guys should consider hosting your site or parts of it in the cloud (Amazon EC2, images in S3, comments in simpledb, use CloudFront to host content closer to the users, etc.)
Let's do it again next year!
For me, it was a waste of time. It was also fun. I did spend several hours patiently waiting for a cart to move and hitting refresh, but that time wasn't taken away from anything critical.
I didn't get my stuff, but I will probably make a purchase of around $60 next time I feel like spending money. I honestly didn't realize all the cool stuff on this site. I've never purchased from here before, but I've worked with teams who've purchased parts from here, and have been considering a purchase for some time. So in my case, the marketing/advertising aspect is a success.
Yes there's some people who buy just to re-sell stuff, or who may buy stuff they're going to end up not using. But I think that on the whole, most people who got stuff are the intended recipients- new customers trying to start projects or previous customers getting a thank-you gift.
Thanks for the effort SparkFun!
I've purchased from Sparkfun before, but the general annoyance I feel after this is going to keep me away. The things I wanted today but couldn't buy will be purchased from some of my other favorite vendors.
To make it worse, all the self-praise the Sparkfun has cranked out for itself in the above text is just obnoxious considering that nothing worked today, except for about 1000 people. I haven't seen such out-of-touch self promotion since the MS Windows Vista launch a few years ago.
1000 People * $100 = $100,000
all I said was you say that you are giving back to the customers that "gave you a stellar year" But you didn't give to us you gave to everyone else!
this was a big publicity STUNT not "giving back to the customers that gave you that $100,000" So stop putting out the BS and admit that.
Deleting posts is PATHETIC.
You are making a post on THEIR site. They have the right to do as they please with it. Don't like it? Don't post!
Hello are you there? ... Timed out
Hello are you there? ... Timed out
Hello are you there? ... Timed out
You were there yesterday?
Oh well my credit card will give me some free money... until the end of the month.
thats not right, I thought so much more of SparkFun before today.
This was just as fair. Sorry it didnt live up to your preconceived notions.
Did we accomplish this? We think so. This was Free Day's primary goal because our customers are the biggest part of what makes SparkFun work."
So you see, Chankster, it's not just my opinion, it's what Sparkfun SAID. When they opened it up to everyone they created pandemonium and didn't really thank their customers. Other folks on here also made suggestions. If SF does this again I hope they come up with a better method next time!
"Did we accomplish this? We think so. This was Free Day's primary goal because our customers are the biggest part of what makes SparkFun work. Their innovation and creativity makes this "world" turn. In our opinion, the beauty of DIY electronics is its openness - this type of technology should be available to everyone to play around with. We thought limiting the promotion to just our prior customers would really be going against this notion. So we opened it up - to everyone. This left some people feeling jilted and some people ecstatic - but overall, we think this was a good thing not just for the people who got their order through, but for the whole DIY electronics community. "
The most retarted lawyer move -eva.
My advice for the future event: offer a deep discount (50% to 75% on everything), but not freebies. It will keep away random people who will resell their freebies on eBay.
The fact that your grandma got thru just proves that it was pretty much random and there's a lot of people that need to be grateful about what they do have, not what they expected to get. I mean seriously, if this was Christmas there would be a lot of people here with a lump of coal in their stockings.
Were you the guy posting ASCII penises (penii?) on the forums? Yeah, those got deleted. :) The tone of this message suggests why you might have had a post or two deleted, too.
Seriously, it's their forum, and thus, their rules. But the Internet is big, and opportunities for you to speak are everywhere. Start a blog, or perhaps twitter your discontent over not getting your freebies. :)
if you had your order done even with all the problems you got, you would not come here or to the forum say anything... and what you talking? what you trying to say?
that would be better to not have freeday than to have? so noone would have anything?
I lost some time too but, maybe this is a beginning... maybe some other sites go for this too like makerShed site or parallax site or something... don't know
also... $100.000 is a lot of money... I know as they sell components it would be like $50.000 from their distributors or even less but... still so much money to just give away to people
Perhaps the solution Sparkfun is looking for is to offer their products at a discount...but not just to anyone. School robotics clubs (like mine) and DIYers (like me) could send in requests specifically detailing what they are attempting to build, why they are building it, their motivation etc. And perhaps receive a certain % discount off their total order...I mean it is Supporting Creativity, Education, and self-motivated learning...
Er, what?
Not for everyone, but they did load for a lucky few. And that's what it was - luck. Not some conspiracy against you, or you, or you. Luck.
You didn't lose any money, just some time (or possibly sleep) that you were prepared to waste anyway (or you wouldn't have kept pressing F5).
If you are really serious about electronics and/or hardware hacking, just get back to working on your next project.
If not, continue to complain about the massive injustice of it all.
When the appointed hour came I began trying the site. With countless attempts there was not a single time that I could even see a Sparkfun web page much less try to actually order anything. I was very briefly excited when a page started to load... until I realized it was telling me that people who were actually allowed to see the website got all the giveaways and there were none left for the rest of us.
I had hoped to use this as an opportunity to try out a couple of products I didn't really have a specific project for but seemed to have potential. Instead I wasted a lot of my time.
That whole "any press is good press" thing? Not so good for retail folks who fail to deliver.
You are making it sound like there was a predetermined lucky group and a 'rest of us' group. Membership of these groups was in fact a random decision based on the timing of your HTTPS request packets.
It was obvious to anyone who actually thought about it that the servers were never going to cope with all the traffic and it would end up being a lucky dip.
Just don't confuse the fact that you were among the unfortunate group (by random chance) with the fact that Sparkfun did something good for the community.
When you buy a product at the supermarket with a "1 in 70 wins" competition attached, do you moan this much about the company when you don't win?
Am I bitter about losing? Not really. I was trying to order some 'nice to have' stuff, and one of those "Arduino" toys to see what the fuss is about, nothing I really need (other than a few $ worth of header pins that I can easily buy locally).
But I am really freaking tired today due to the 45 minutes I wasted from 3AM. I've participated in 100,000 person web sales before (tickets for big music festivals) that sell out in 5 minutes. That's what I expected, not 45 mins of F5 mashing with only seeing a result once.
Still, no such thing as bad publicity and all that.
Any chance of a BatchPCB free day ? ;)
However, I think the best thing to do would, of course after you guys make it back into some black numbers, make a new, similar promotion (perhaps at not so large a scale), limited to those of us stuck in high school or college.
Timeouts have gained a whole new terrible meaning because of today ;)
Now, take a look at twitter. I counted over 100 people bragging that they were using botnets, bragging that they were going to sell their "winnings," or that they had done some other dirty trick. How many upset, dissapointed and estranged geeks did you create vs. how many new customers have you gotten? I'll wager that you've actually experienced a net loss in customers.
Once more back to the stats. More than 110,000 visits. 1035 actual sales. 9% of your new and old customers made it through, while 91% were snubbed.
Sparkfun, if you ever consider doing something like this again... please revise your plans. This did much more to hurt your reputation than it did to help you.
--Is there any proof that they won anything or did anything malicious? No....unless you have access to the SF servers or have seen the loot that these people got, it's just internet TROLLS...there are quite a few...
"How many upset, dissapointed and estranged geeks did you create vs. how many new customers have you gotten? I'll wager that you've actually experienced a net loss in customers."
--unknown how many new followers but I'm there is a mix of people who found something that they like and won't necessarily base their main opinion on an event were they were getting $100 dollars worth of free stuff...
-- how exactly has this hurt their rep....please explain.... they were giving away free stuff and opened it to all....it got huge and a lot of people slammed their servers...
Being a long time customer, I'm bummed I couldn't get on the free wagon, but it's not the end of the world because I didn't get $100 dollars worth of free stuff that was never guaranteed to begin with...
To me their rep is not tarnished by this event...I was amused by it in fact...I saw what was coming for the last few days as it was building up....but I'm not holding it against them....The did something for a community and if that community is this unforgiving, I don't know...maybe we won't have a next time where they could improve upon the events that unfolded today...
I didn't have space in the original post to mention that my credit card number was stolen during this event. I don't blame sparkfun for this, but their security must have been zero-to-nil during the high-profile event.
We got to see one of our favorite sites get tons of attention. We experienced the thrill of getting a page farther into checkout, the disappointment of server timeouts. Anyone who thought this was going to turn out differently was fooling himself/herself. Faster servers would have made the two hours of random people getting through into two minutes of random people getting through. Either way, you get exactly what was advertised - a chance.
Way to go SparkFun! I'm a frustrated customer who now has a cart with $100 of stuff I'll be buying some day. I'm glad that things went the way they did.
Loyal SparkFun customers unite!
Had a fair amount of fun, and actually learned a bit more about the internet.
As a broke college student, a gadgeteer, and amateur hack-n-basher, I wanted to say thanks to you folks. I've been reading message boards all day, and I really hope you listen to the praise, and discount the people who are hating on you right now. I wish I could have gotten some free loot, but I really appreciate the innovative way you gave it out (sorry, but this DDoS lottery was kind of a neat phenomenon to be a part of).
Stock your shelves back up, when the student loans start coming in, I need to get some parts. Thank you.
PS: If it ever comes down to it, I'd be happy to review organizations requests for tech assistance. It would be a great project to help me learn more about this great hobby/educational tool.
What a hectic morning!
As for broader impact, on the one hand: lots of attention. On the other: attention from people who don't really need parts for themselves. Sigh...
Was I p*ssed? Heck yeah, it sucks to not get anything - when so many others are. Especially when there is an element that is buying $100.00 worth of products to resell.
Am I gonna blacklist SFE? H*LL NO! Because, even though I personally didn't get anything for free - there are plenty of others (that will actually use the parts) that are gonna get their first chance to make something that they couldn't afford before.
Despite the fact that I had my order planned for about a a week prior to Free Day - and ended up buying the necessities at regular price, I have to commend SF for giving back!
Don't be mad at SF, be mad at the freeloaders and opportunists that clogged the pipes to make a buck off of SF's generosity!
Hey, who cares who won and who didn't and who wants to resell it... I had to be far for my monitor most of the FreeDay time and later I couldn't make through, so I won nothing, but it was a lot of adrenalin and a lot of fun, and Sparkfun is awesome!
Good luck to all of you guys, doing great job!
Thanks for the fun scramble SF!
Order placed tonight while disappointed by network performance on free day. The summary about how good it was is over the top/insensitive to a lot of people - bit of denial about the client viewpoint. At 5pm CST, no connect!? Good?!
Get stoked about the reception, but "do something for others"? Set a "free" limit of 25 or 50 to spread it around?
How many winners didn't cart up a 100 to keep room for more to get a bit? The ebay generation goes for big free. IDK. It was cool, but less giddy gloss would be nice too. Maybe that'll happen tomorrow when the champagne wears off and adrenalin stops pumping. In the end, it was cool even with the negative currents swirling all over it. Good on ya. Better next time?
My two PicAxe chips + DS18B20 temperature sensors are going into automating the air vents in our house, hopefully saving hundreds every month in energy costs.
The LCD screen will go on the controller board for my homemade aeroponics tank, which is already producing tomatoes and helping to clean the planet's air.
The hall effect sensors will be used to replace the reed-switch design in a keyboard I made to withstand the heavy wear and tear of producing Braille material for the blind.
The Arduino USB board will be used to program Atmega 168 chips, which I will use to turn a set of broken toys into a programmable robot lab for a local elementary school.
I know you're getting a lot of flak here, but I want you all to know that these parts will be used well to help children learn, the disabled read, and make a significant dent in one household's carbon footprint.
Oh boy this was disappointing. I had a perfect strategy, at least I assumed. Hours before the start I filled my shopping card with items worth of 130$, then I was waiting for the start. Half an hour before the show it was already impossible to log in. Alone the log in took about half an hour. Then I tried for about 45 minutes to get to the content of my shopping cart, but it was impossible. 100eds of denials of service. Verry disappointing,...
The still was a fun exercise and it made me think about what I really needed Vs what I wanted and I had a really good look around the sparkfun web site. There are some things that I never thought would be useful to me that now I realize would be. I will be placing an order for those jumper leads shortly.
The 7th was my Birthday too although it was the next day (3AM) here in Australia.
Now there is no way I am going to moan and spark about missing out on free stuff. I would suggest that maybe there might be better systems to consider if you ever do this insane exercise again. However just the way it is has its own fun and charm and let's not try to be to clinical to the point of losing that.
Thanks again guys for the opportunity.
All the Best,
Jim Robertson
I know I did :D
The pains of having to "re-send" my request several times over the space of about 2 hours was worth it when my order finally went through!
I am busy reading the "FREE" book and I am finding it a very good read.
I do agree about maybe changing the format if this is planned again in future. I especially like the idea of choosing random orders at random times and giving discounts or vouchers.
Anyway it is stuff like this which turns "one time buyers" into loyal supporters! THANK YOU SparkFun!
But then my project is just something I fancy doing, not something I need to do. Waiting for the Free Day did give me the chance to refine my choices, so maybe I will wait till the next one and by then I will have the ideal list
The whole game based only on pure luck like a lottery and as it took one and quarter hour I think everyone had possibility which is good. If this server had been ultra fast and served every visitor and fund had ended in fist five-ten seconds then it couldn't been so fair at all.
But still I placed my order (a little bit more than $100) one hour later when server worked like a charm again!
Thank you for this chance! :-)
I didn't get anything from France, even hitting F5 for at least 2 hours (even when increasing FF timeouts)!
I really think that geography on the network was the key.
Don't bother too much about complaints: only the people who didn't make it will complain, you will never hear about the others!
Netx time, you will have to think of a better way to reward your customers
There will always be people that abuse situations but that is no fault of sparkfun.
I thank you Sparkfun for setting such a precedent thats unparalelled in the community. As a beginner its the thing that provided the motivation to make up my mind and get my first parts to start learning.
I put in my order today (~$200) although i figure it will take ages due to the freeday craziness.
In the future as an international customer what I would love the most is free shipping (i could have got a couple of arduinos if i didnt have to pay that)!
Post-Free Day: man, you !@#$%# SOB SF
º¿º ---Sometimes you just can't win...
I got something from this free day, a broken F5 key...
China, 1/4 of the world's population, and not a single item was won by someone in China. That's an interesting stat.
I enjoyed Free Day, except for those moments when I realized I didn't get any goodies... awww.. just had one of those moments...
What was I writing about again?
Mike
Pure luck on your connection I guess because I was there from start to finish refreshing constantly trying to place my order for the first time on this site.
I remember there would be an occasional page that would refresh and show it halfway or updating. One refresh brought up the site as an all text no pics so that was one good idea they implemented in the mayhem.
Anyway, in the meantime, Futurelec, a very good company that is well known and reliable with cheap prices on popular components should be on everyones list as a main electronic supplier during this slow period.
You could do a random free day/week. Randomly select 1000 orders to get $100 discounts on there order. It'd be a little less pressure on your IT guys too.
Free day was fun, even though i didn't try to get one of those free giveaways (i didn't even visit your site during the chaos). Just thinking of the mayhem you will cause was enough for me ;)
thanks.
Watch out for ManBearPig
How many new members joined on in the last week/month? I know I was one of them
Yeah, I went there. ;-)
If you ever do this again I think you might want to go with someone other than Rockynet.
Well, it still was a nice action. I knew I had very little chance of getting trough. Only thing that's bad is that people are reselling stuff they got for free... Ok, and that I wasted a lot of time... But that was my choice and it was worth trying.
Sure, I'm sort of a freeloader too. I registered specially for this action. But not to resell! Electronics is my hobby*, and this was a (small) chance of getting some cool electronic parts and modules for free!
I hope sparkfun made a lot of profit because of this action... ...So they will repeat (an improved** version) it. Annual sparkfun freeday... Wouldn't that be great?
(comment was over 1000 chars, see part 2)
*BTW: I'm an electrical engineering student too. But the items I would have bought on freeday (if I got trough) where for hobby purposes. Started studying this year while hobbying for about 5 years...:).
** Some smart things said in the comments above and below this one could help with that. I sirket's idea of one-time-use coupon codes for randomly selected registered accounts. Would save a lot of time and server load...
I hope sparkfun made a lot of profit because of this action... ...So they will repeat (an improved** version) of it. Annual sparkfun freeday... Wouldn't that be great?
I like sirket's idea of one-time-use coupon codes for randomly selected registered accounts.
One thing I definitely agree on though is that I think next time it should just be a random day with maybe a 1 day announcement. A friend of mine, who has no electronic experience, found out about it on fatwallet and at that point I knew there as very little chance of getting anything.
Overall though, Good job on the freeday Sparkfun, it is nice to see companies give back to the community.
Best wishes for the new year
I am so thankful that you had a free day, I got the intermediate tool kit which I needed for school (and for my own projects) And I got the clockit for fun. But my teacher said we need to get our own soldering and debugging tools, and after paying for school I have so little left. I can not afford to get any food more expensive that Ramen noodles, or hot dogs made from who knows what. But this sale made it possible for me to get the supplies I needed for my education.
So from now on when ever I need a part, I would normally get it from a different website (Hint it starts with 'D') but from now on I will buy my parts from you, because I am so thankful for your generosity and your way of thinking.
As a gift for your free day generosity, I give you a lifetime patron to your website. And I am advertising everywhere I can for sparkfun.com now (on gmail and facebook status).
I hope that free day will happen again in the future...
Thank you,
masselir
Always wanted to get an Arduino to help me on some of my "I wish I could do this" projects, and to prototype with. In fact, I want to build a homebrew underwater ROV just for the heck of it since I live near some bodies of water, and wanted the brains of it to be an Arduino Mega.
I heard about Free day a month back, and kept waiting eagerly. Created an account for the first time the other night, put a couple things in my shopping cart (Arduino Mega, some RGB led's I needed, and an Arduino Duemilanove. (continued)
Well from the second Free day started until it ended, I was able to see the site a total of 4 times. Two of those times I was trying to get the checkout process started, and after a long wait and several refreshes, it just pushed me back to the main website and logged me out. This isn't counting the timeouts or denials. Two other times it was just trying to finish loading the HTML but never completed.
I tried using 4 different networks, two of them right from a console on fiber backbones, but never saw more than a few lines of HTML. I knew the servers were the bottlenecks themselves, just hoped the fiber would aid in some small way haha.
Am I mad? Nope, I had a great time trying. I wasn't out anything, and to be honest none of us were, even the people I've seen who said "I based my whole college thesis project on these parts" or "I planned months on a project and needed these parts now FML". I'm sorry, that's a bunch of crap. (cont)
Broke college student? I hear you. Trust me, I hear you, and I know it hurts. But if you can't find a way to save $100 or earn it or just get donations from people, to save your thesis project doctorate whatever.. you might want to reconsider your situation in life and what your priorities really are. And yes, there are "genuinely unable to make any extra room in their pockets" people, but I doubt those people are the ones going "woe is me, FML".
Is it a slap in the face of die-hard SF'ers? It can be seen as such. Was it a way to get a helluvamount of site traffic and promotion? Yup. Are people going to resell some stuff who aren't SF'ers or even tinkerers? Yup.. and that happens all through life.
(cont)
I applaud SF's efforts, and thank them for the chance to try. It really was a lot of fun and broke my normal work routine into something fun and worth fighting for. Though I was one of the people who honest to gosh never saw the website (not sure how anyone did really), I'm not going to say they owe me a living, or that their IT sucks--it was a crapshoot people, and the SA's learned a lot as well and they admitted it.
Hopefully maybe sometime this year I can find some extra money in the budget to get an Arduino and have fun with it, until then I'll just keep tinkering with what I have and dumpster diving and grabbing parts from stuff.
SparkFun, thanks again for the chance, hopefully you guys do even better this year than in past years!
Good Riddance.
That is all.
I guess you must be referring to this eBay auction, since the first 2 other sites that pop up charge $5.00 shipping?
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=110472948369&rvr_id=&crlp=1_263602_263622&UA=WXF%3F&GUID=0a0c3f151260a02653931a23ffdf9b37&itemid=110472948369&ff4=263602_263622
You CAN get them for $0.15 cheaper. $3.80, plus $1.75 shipping per IC.
But here, it gets cheaper as I add chips, because they are so light. If I buy 4 I will only spend around $5.00/chip.
If I order 4 FT232RL's from eBay, I'm probably going to pay $1.75 shipping per IC (5.55/chip), because those IC's are not cheap.
In EITHER case, Guardianfox claims he got a 79% discount on a $130 order. My point was that it's not likely unless the parts he got were LEDs or something that's available everywhere.
MY original point was that saying "good riddance" to those who complained and suggested that they might leave is NOT going to help SparkFun retain customers and be profitable. Hence "Back at ya"
I'm really sorry to hear that some people decided to misuse free day and try to profit off of it... it's sad that a lot of the stuff didn't make it into the hands of people who could really use it imaginatively. Oh, well... guess we can't do much about that! Maybe some of those people will get the parts and actually decide that they're cool enough to play with!
I am not a returning customer, and in fact I had never even heard of Sparkfun prior to this event. However I intend to be a returning customer going forward, as a result of their obvious appreciation of their customers, and enthusiasm for what they do.
To those complaining about the folks grabbing up free stuff only to hawk it on eBay...welcome to the world around you...you don't like it, change it! Also, if you've never run an e-commerce site, trying to predict load when it can range from 1 to 1 billion potential customers....I suggest you give it a try before you cast stones.
Congrats to those who made it through yesterday, and thank you Sparkfun for living up to your name!
It is one thing to play the lottery and lose, it is a completely different thing not even get close to the lottery counter, because it was only open for a selected few ones.
I skipped my first 3 periods of school hoping to get a few things, aha.
If you're interested though, here's one of the first things I did:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XSBOg357mQs
Simple:
Computer sends command to Arduino, Arduino sends command to relay, switches the power button, viola.
Things have gotten more complicated since then.
I am NOT surprised at the negative comments here, mostly from the young folks who think they are somehow more deserving than the other 168,097 people who tried and could not make it. I know too many younglings who think the world revolves around them, and that everything should be handed to them on a silver platter (or in a free red box.) Perhaps they will someday learn to accept things with dignity and grace.
Thanks Sparkfun! Keep up the great work!
Just wondering -- do you think there was anything you could have done to make your promotion more self-defeating? was up at 4 AM, California time and finally succeeded in getting the products I wanted to buy into my cart by 7:00. rom 8:00 until 10:00 I sat in front of my browser refreshing windows in an attempt to complete the order, but mostly what I got was time-out errors. wice I actually got to the screen to specify my shipping method, but clicking send sent the browser into never-never land, from which that session never returned.
Congratulations. You spent $100,000 to:
a) Prove to the world that you have no idea how to build an e-commerce site that can be scaled to meet demand, and
b) Pissed off a huge number of customers, a large number of which (like me) will go out of their way to avoid ever buying anything again from Sparkfun.
As a commenter you've proven to the world that
1) You have no idea how an e-commerce site works.
2) No idea the cost involved in scaling to meet demand for one small moment of a site's entire existence.
3) You aren't owed a $100 discount on the $170 order like you said. But what you didn't do was actually bother to read anything about freeday and then have the balls to complain that you were ignorant on how it worked. That is not honesty.
You represented this all along as a first-commenter who understood how freeday worked but had obviously never bothered to read any of SparkFun's postings on how it would work.
Shame on you.
Now there is something important going on here that you will miss if you aren't paying attention. You didn't owe me a $100 discount on the $170 order that was in my cart, but what you did owe me was honesty. You represented this all along as a first-come-first-serve opportunity. Well, I was probably one of the very first to submit my order, and I do not believe 1000 people got ahead of me in the first 3 seconds you were open for business.
Ok, maybe it wasn't 3 seconds. The 4 browser windows I had open all showed different count-down times, but I was definitely submitted within a second or two of the first one saying you were open.
What you billed as first-come-first-served was in reality a game of chance, with the winners chosen by random browser timing. I played by the rules as you laid them out and did everything right, only to come up a loser with nothing to show for 6 hours.
https://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/news.php?id=305
First of all, the words "first come first serve" NEVER appear, anywhere. Second of all, there's this whole blurb:
"Free Day will possibly create a maelstrom of site traffic, the likes of which our servers have not seen ... We'll do everything in our power to keep the site up but please understand that the site may go down."
So you ASSUMED it was first come first serve based on your own misconceptions of how the internet works and got pissed that SF misrepresented themselves. Think about it: if 100000 people click the submit button AT THE SAME TIME and only ~1000 are allowed to get through, how do you realistically enforce first come first serve? You don't get how high traffic situations work. Don't blame SF, they did what they could to accommodate the traffic that comes from being the top search term on Google. They probably could have thrown tens of thousands of dollars at more capacity that wouldn't be used after it was over but then it would end in a matter of minutes and you'd still be pissed, because they owe you something, apparently.
My customer number is 31309, and I've left my cart open. I'm definitely still interested in the Saleae logic analyzer, but I will be buying it direct from Saleae, rather than you. I won't ever again buy something from you that I can find anywhere else.
As a side note, if you ever decide to do something like this again, talk to the people who run Burning Man. In about a week they will put 9000 tickets on sale for $210 each, and they will be gone in 3-4 hours, with a maximum of 2 tickets per person.. Those tickets will be sold on a first-come-first-served basis, with everyone able to see where they are in the queue as soon as they click the button that says they want to buy. The queue position is a number that steadily drops, and when it gets to zero, the purchase process will go very smoothly. No one will get timeout errors. Miss the window to buy $210 tickets, and you will pay $240 as part of the next group of 9000.
It amazes me how badly you managed to screw up giving away something of value, with nothing to show for your money except massive amounts of ill will and former customers. I feel like you lied to me when you explained how your promotion was going to work, and I have no tolerance for that.
-- Doug Lippincott
I think you're having a stupid emotional reaction and are trying to rationalize it by writing a long letter that you might think sounds rational but that is obviously not reasonable. It's sad that so many have the same kind of mentality that you do. Let's look at just a few of your ridiculous claims:
"... with nothing to show for your money except massive amounts of ill will ..." If you are remotely objective, you have to see that SparkFun's achievement has created massive amounts of good will, too.
"I do not believe 1000 people got ahead of me in the first 3 seconds you were open for business." Isn't it clear there were at least tens of thousands of people around the world trying to submit orders in the first few seconds? They were all as "first come" as you were.
"... only to come up a loser with nothing to show for 6 hours." That was your choice to keep trying after it was obvious there were many people doing the same thing. If the servers would have worked infinitely quickly, you still would have spent the first four hours and gotten nothing.
- Jan
"SparkFun Electronics is Temporarily Closed!
SparkFun Electronics has been temporarily closed while necessary upgrades are installed and configured.
Please be patient and check back soon. We're working tirelessly to make this down time as brief as possible."
My cart still has the items I was unsuccessful trying to get on Free Day, when I received a bogus message that my credit card number indicated my card was not an accepted card type (I used the same card at the site a couple of weeks earlier without problems, it's listed as a valid card type and I entered the number correctly because it went through just after the free day cut-off).
Now that I can't access my shopping cart at all, I'm getting the paranoid feeling Spark Fun doesn't want me to have these items. Oh well, maybe the site just isn't working as well as Spark Fun thinks it is. Sorry, guys, but that's what it looks like from here.
Due to the large volume of orders, I wasn't expecting that package for 2 weeks at least.
I have been wanting to start experimenting with microcontrollers for ages but can't afford to get started with them- this was a perfct chance and I'm sorry to have missed it.
My new resolution for the new year is to try and save up enough that I can place an order, it will just take longer than I would like
I hope make magazine and hack a day have a flurry of new projects because of this free day. Thank anyways for giving 1,000 very lucky people a shot at this instead of wasting money on tv commercials or something useless. good job guys.
FreeDay came, so -flood- for the site. As my first order, things of course went wrong. Suggestions:
1) Put an entire order, shipping methods, address, credit card info, and any constraints (like must get the up to $100 discount for freeday) in a single HTTP GET uri API.
2) A dry-run option for training and info validation (could be abused so only logged in account with logged attempts and some choke limit).
3) I reduced my order to core items, and noticed that I could have gone to a page that had #1's info but was part of the order process. Add a checkbox/entry 'Only Place order if at least $X could be free'; then just that final to next page transition could be hammered. It would also let potential customers get that page loaded up in the before FreeDay opened and then just retry one page.
You still wouldn't have your stuff, and the whole thing would have gone trough in 5minutes instead of 1h44
thanks again, Jerry
No, they didn't. Especially for those who couldn't even get a TCP connection set up. You apparently have no clue how this Internet thing works.
And the fact that 80% of the giveaways went to US orderers also tells a story. Foreign Internet users couldn't get through, likely because your ISP has a piss-poor international Internet connection or maybe because you deliberately rate-limited them. For your foreign customers your pages didn't load at all. But since when did you care about your foreign customers at all.
And since you don't know which percentage of US customers where trying to get freebies, you can't guess anything from the percentage of US winners.
Anyway, since distance has an impact on ping and SparkFun servers are in the US, US customers would always be at an advantage, whatever the ISP.
Yes! I was frustrated at the site (NOT Loading) and then when my order had qualified, my browser crashing (damn Chrome), but I loved the spirit of the whole deal.
Alexei
Ontario, Canada
http://tinyurl.com/y87qe2c
Sorry to pop your bubble, mate.
US $4.55 Standard Int'l Flat Rate Shipping
Read the fine print. That's $5.55 for one IC. Try buying more than one.
Or, better suggestion: Fire them for the terrible customer service we experienced yesterday!
I am not that upset (disappointed, sure)...I suppose I need a faster computer, or a faster broadband connection or both, still, this is the first time I have ever even heard of anything like this.
I'm also a student working on a few projects that would have benefited from this giveaway- and almost planned that I would be in the winnings.
The reality is that it was a no rules free for all where the entire internet came crashing down on Sparkfun. The sad thing is that a lot of gear is going to end up on eBay. The funny thing is this is how a lot of people operate. It was an easy buck with the right sniping software or scripts. Its like the people with the bidding software for eBay that snipe you 30 times in the last 3 seconds of the auction. Its like the major stock brokers moving their trading centers across the hall from wall street with a broadband data link to play the markets. This stuff happens.
A lot of people feel entitled to a free day for their hard work, support, and loyalty to businesses. Entitlement is the sad joke of the paternalism age, little more, little less.
The free day concept was huge, its a revolutionary marketing concept. If I had time I'd read that book Nate got the idea from. The author is clearly a genius.
I tried logging in the night before just to brows products and look for a few new sensors. LOL. I couldn't even get in. I started trying to log in at 8am Eastern and didn't get the main page to load until almost an hour after the kickoff and only $6500 had been claimed. When the login timed out, many times, I gave up and went back to work. An hour later I try logging back in and $99,500 was gone. Interesting.
It would have been cool to win something but honestly what can you expect. This is possibly the most disgustingly awesome viral marketing campaign in human history.
And if your one of those stock brokers making bank off this economy of ours I hope you sponsor a few of us broke college students trying to make this world a better place.
P.S. Sparkfun doesn't like long posts.
We have to stick together. We cant be getting mad at eachother (or sparkfun) for server timeouts. Im mad I didnt get anything either, but Im not about to take it out on fellow engineers/computer scientists.
Done.
I am really amazed for your Free Day... it's uncommon to hear about a company giving away $100 with no restrictions at all... you are fantastic.
As a side note... you should give a special gift to the client who placed the highest order ($425.42)...who incidentally it's me :) (I have so much to explain to my wife); keep doing the great job you have done (and don't hear the silly-angry people that don't understand this was an opportunity of fun and celebration). Again: thank you so much.
Congratulations and Kudos on this successful event.
But I think it could have been more fair, looking at the numbers/orders per country. I'm european and F5 just didn't do it for me...
Why not customers only? That way also probably a lot less stuff would be winding up on ebay. If that is the case anyway.
I decided to go ahead and order my $100 cart anyway.
Next month when I have enough money again :)
I think Amazon may have a better approach with their Lightning deals and deal of the day. I think a lot of traffic would be generated by people coming in to see what happens to be on sale each day...
Hint: 50% off on an Arduino Mega would be a good one to start with :-)
The shutdown at 8am kicked me and the others I know in Norway off the server and we could never log back in so that ended our chances. Noticing now that not a single order came from Norway is no surprise.
I do agree with those suggesting that there should have been more of a reseller/freeloader-deterrent in the offer. That would have curbed the traffic a bit and allowed anyone to complete their order regardless of distance to server or bottleneck of connection. If it then turned out to be free, they'd be very happy. Otherwise atleast they wouldn't have wasted 2 hours without even getting a normal order in.
I just hope I'll atleast get my last order that was supposedly shipped the 10'th december. So far it's looking bleek. (Stupid x-mas mail probably clogging up the works!)
I suppose it was inevitable that the servers would instantly overload. Anyhow, credit to SparcFun for the big giveaway. I guess those servers are marked ‘tested’ now :)
For the students that could use the free parts, organize a group and have a fundraiser.
As suggested in many electronic forums, ask for free samples from semiconductor manufacturers. You may not get the exact parts you want, so you may have to use some creativity in your design. Thats part of the fun of being a good engineer!
I was able to checkout three times but didn't get in time to payment page. Could you guys give a small discount to the people would tried hard but didn't have any luck?
That could make me buy those things! :)
Also perhaps another idea for a future free day (I hope SF grows so hard after freeday that another server cluster is necessary :p) is to let people post idea's of future projects. The best idea's, voted by other customers, get the free things.
Great idea, but don't let the thought that anything ordered since won't arrive for weeks put you off from placing an order!
I know you wanted to attract new customers, but the reality is that free distorts the economics too much. If you make something free, people will grab a handful just because it's free, not because they actually wanted or needed whatever you were offering.
I do applaud your goal of giving back, but perhaps next time (assuming there is a next time) you should do something like 50% off for a day, or random orders are made free. Either of those would still be a big win for people who really want the products, but would discourage the people who are getting it just because it's free.
My shopping cart is still full - and I was just thinking - it would probably only take a discount offered to me to make me complete the purchase.
Offer a 20% discount to all those who had non-empty shopping carts on the free day but missed out, and you'd probably generate another huge round of publicity, without it impacting on your bottom line too badly.
I know I for one would complete the transaction if I got that offer ;-)
Lots of people pressing F5 which is the exact WRONG thing to do to get to the next page. F5 reloads the current page, not the next page that you want to get to.
The correct approach, used by the people who actually got free stuff, was to click the relevant button for getting to the next page, eg cart/checkout.
95% of the time it wouldn't load. So you had to click the browser 'stop' button and click the cart/checkout button again and keep repeating that many times until you got to the next page. Then you could move on doing the same with the next page until you finally finished the order.
F5 was only useful at the very start for getting the sparkfun main page to load. Once you got it loaded ya never needed to press F5 again, you just kept pressing the button to get to the next step.
As you said, "we want to get back to the community" so I was patiently waiting to get my free stuff.
I didn't get anything, though I tried hard. I kept getting blank pages. Of course I'm annoyed. I'm part of the first few customers of SF and from what I understand people just showed up on that specific day to grab free stuff, while I didn't get anything.
Now to me this looks like more an advertisement stunt than thanking the community. If you really want to give back to the community you shouldn't allow newer accounts to benefit from free day, or have a pro-rata based on the how long people have been registered user. Also, provide a longer window to allow most people to get to your site.
My cart is still full, I have no plans to check it out because I would feel used if I were to do so.
I'm relatively new to SparkFun (one previous order), and was hoping to stock up on somethings for some project ideas that I have. I didn't 'win' any of the Free-Day money, but still place a smaller order for some parts!
Congrats to all who did win, I hope the parts will go to good use and more/new tutorials are generated as a result!
;-> (cjh)
I've already got the Lilypad up and running, and am on my way to figuring out how to get the Bluetooth Mate attached to it to talk to me. I'll try to post a howto once I get everything working..
Thanks again!
Let the whiner's whine.. you can't make everybody happy!!
Now, however, I do have a complaint.. I have suffered carpal tunnel syndrome in several fingers from hitting F5 so often and am now incapacitated and unable to work... my lawyers will be contacting you shortly.. (just kidding.. couldn't resist!)
About the F5 keys, however; it would be great if you produced a number of F5 replacement keys with the Sparkfun logo on them.. I know I'd grab a few (free or not!!)
Again.. great job and hope to see it again next year!!
However, here is another perspective on the IT statistics
1035 orders in 105 mins
==> Only one order successful processed approximately every 6 seconds.
Given that may people (myself included) had their shopping carts pre-loaded prior to the start of the event...
This is a less flattering stat, and suggests that there are opportunities to improve system performance -- especially if another FreeDay is to be planned.
May I also point out that there is very low number (my S.W.A.G. is 1%) among those who benefited from the vouchers who will even have the desire to document and share their projects. It seems to me that the way to get more projects shared would be to reward those who submit complete documentation that is usable by others, IMHO. 73
I am so disgusted that script-kiddies came to rob us! so, where is the map of showing where most of these packages went to. call the national enquirer. I want to know. :D
I was highly frustrated and disappointed on Free Day too, but only because SFE had set the expectation for the day as a First Come First Served type of event, and that's not what it turned out to be.