Electro Tech is an online community (with over 170,000 members) who enjoy talking about and building electronic circuits, projects and gadgets. To participate you need to register. Registration is free. Click here to register now.
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Anyone get any free loot at SparkFun's Free Day today? Talk about a self-inflicted DDOS attack! I tried like hell to get in, but it was impossible. Ah well... I'll try again next year.
It's a pretty cool place they've got there, but I find the stuff to be much to expensive, generally speaking. I've been on the forum for a little while and thought I'd give a crack at the 10 question quiz to see if I could make a little credit, and then I'd consider a nice soldering station or something of the like.
From a business perspective, it's basically 150 grand for advertisement. Realistically, I think they let a lot of people down there and I think that many will remember that they spent two hours trying to get in just to find it was all over when the page finally loaded. That whole "we want a DOS test" is kinda BS to me. I'm not an IT guy, but I believe that a few good IT nerds can simulate that easily. IMO, it's an excuse for "our servers just aren't capable of this."
They can still accomplish the advertising that they want without burning up a lot of the community's goodwill as follows:
Lower the individual maximum take from $100 to $40.
Spend about 10k renting out more bandwith.
So, instead of a mimimum of 1,500 people earning, you have a miminum of 3500 earning, and everyone is happier because they were able to actually get in and "play the game."
Plus, for what stuff costs over there, I'd imagine they'd go ahead and spend 20 or 30 bucks on top of their free $40. With a 50% gross margin (which I imagine they easily pull at those prices), the $40 credit you gave the customer costs you $20. If he spends 20 more on top of that, you're in the hole now just $10 dollars per customer.
10 x 3500 = 35,000
35,000 + 10,000 spent on the extra server rental = 45,000 cost of "advertisement" to them
Not to mention more people have become customers, and less people are now pissed off at you.
After spending way too much time, and laying the big goose egg last year, I promised myself to not even try this year. The temptation was too great, and after about 20 mins of tapping the customer loyalty button, it finally accepted, yay ...a $40 credit. It goes to show, even an old fart can find an acorn once in awhile.
My first Sparkfun purchase from Oct 2006 was an Olimex PIC-40 development board, and a PIC16f88, good stuff, and well used.
WannaB, you can't simulate a DDOS attack of that nature, they're multi point. Anyone that trys to get in should know that the chances are slim, it's people getting their hopes up that are the problem, I doubt they're losing ANY customers. Yes the devices they sell are a little expensive but many of them you can't find ANYWHERE else on the Internet PERIOD. They are and user aimed company, they want happy customers, but they are running a buisness to be poor, I think their prices are reasonable for the devices they sell, maybe not always but it's up to the end user to shop on their own.
WannaB, you can't simulate a DDOS attack of that nature, they're multi point. Anyone that trys to get in should know that the chances are slim, it's people getting their hopes up that are the problem, I doubt they're losing ANY customers. Yes the devices they sell are a little expensive but many of them you can't find ANYWHERE else on the Internet PERIOD. They are and user aimed company, they want happy customers, but they are running a buisness to be poor, I think their prices are reasonable for the devices they sell, maybe not always but it's up to the end user to shop on their own.
Thanks for the correction on the DDOS. I was speaking not from bitterness, but from a business perspective. I was out of luck personally on this one, but reading some of the comments on their page showed some unhappiness from their customer base.
wannaB... More people didn't get in than did, of course some people are going to react emotionally. These are not their best customers, these are people that were skimming for free stuff. Regardless of weather or not there is positive or negative feedback on an issue doesn't mean that the feedback is coming from the proper place.
Got nothing last year ... but had a lot of fun trying for hours. This year it was no fun trying, my internet connection dropped over a dozen times, and the error page annoyed the hell out of me.
Bu I made $60 on the quiz - got to 7 questions before the money ran out. I think that as more people got through to the quiz, the requests on the servers slowed down as we stopped to ponder the answers, and thus the last 5 minutes was smooth and ran through most of the money.
I live right in Boulder, Colorado (my second home from "Outer Space," as my profile indicates) and this has been going on right under my nose! I'll have to remember next year to go.
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