Kate's Calendars Challenge

Had some excitement this week...

2006-11-19T13:31:00.000-08:00

We got a call this week from some guy from Fisher Price. He wanted to buy some for the executives of Mattel with a Fisher Price theme on it. I guess they're counting down the days until their holiday shopping season. We've been calling him back, but he's out on vacation until next week. Bummer.

No sales this week.

Nada

2006-11-11T21:03:00.000-08:00

Well, we ended the week selling four calendars. It's a start.

Our GoogleAds campaign is attracting lots of visitors but none of them are buying. We're thinking if we change the page layout that might increase sales.

I'm going to try contacting some places this week to see if they want to carry our product. Maybe Missionary Emporium will reconsider taking us up. Last year, they contacted us saying they were interested in carrying Kate's Calendars, however, they never called back. After trying to contact them unsuccessful several times through e-mail and telephone, we gave up.

How about them Sooners? OU 34- Texas Tech 24

Nothing...

2006-11-10T06:01:00.000-08:00

We haven't sold any calendars lately... We're trying to think of ways to promote sales.

School's going alright. Just four more weeks until finals.

Sold four calendars

2006-11-06T09:39:00.000-08:00

Last night we got an order for four calendars from someone in Huntington Beach, CA. It was a referral from our Google Adwords campaign. Hopefully, this won't be the only sale we get from Google Adwords.

BikerFox

2006-11-05T12:03:00.000-08:00

This is BikerFox. He's a local celebrity here in Tulsa. He's a guy that rides his bike all the time. It doesn't matter if it's 105 degrees, the guy is out there ridding his bike. If you see him around town, you can roll down your window and ask him to do trick. He'll usually do a pop and wheelie for you. Hist best trick is his forward flip over his handle bars, as seen here.

But his awesomeness doesn't stop with the handlebar flip. BikerFox has gone digital.

His webpage is the most awesome awesomest thing I've ever seen. He has a whole section of Glamour Shots of himself as well as some great Photoshop pictures involving raccoons and OU football.

You can even hire BikerFox to give a motivations speech at your next corporate meeting. He'll do his signature handlebar flip to get your employees pumped to meet their sales goals.

BikerFox is just one more reason why Tulsa is the greatest place to live.

Daily Report

2006-11-02T20:06:00.001-08:00

No sales. I did get Google adwords running, though. Hopefully, that will direct some traffic to our site and we can get some sales.

Daily Report

2006-11-02T20:06:00.000-08:00

No sales. I did get Google adwords running, though. Hopefully, that will direct some traffic to our site and we can get some sales.

Making Money off of Google

2006-11-01T21:22:00.000-08:00

This guy put a post on getting his first check from adsense. I'll have to look into doing this.

Primary Lesson Plans

2006-11-01T20:02:00.000-08:00

Kate and I teach primary to the 9-10 year olds in our ward. We thought we weren't going to like it, but it's turned out to be better than we thought. Hanging out with kids is much better than sitting through adult Sunday School. At least we can make learning about the Old Testament fun.

Our only challenge has been coming up with lesson plans that are both engaging and spiritually uplifting. The lesson manual doesn't offer much help. Every Sunday the suggested activity is to have the kids "pantomime" the story. You can only play charades so many times before it gets old. I guess the whole point of the lesson manual being vauge and general is for us to learn how to get inspiration in our callings.

But it's hard to find time to get inspiration when you're either at law school or preparing tomorrow's history lecture. It also doesn't help that Kate and I don't have kids, so we really don't know what kind of activities engage kids. Kate and I want the kids to get somethign out of primary. Our goal is that they leave with a stronger testimony of the gospel. We needed some help. Here's a common scence Saturday night.

Kate: "Hey, we need to plan tomorrows primary lesson."
Brett: "But I need to study Civil Procedure."
Kate: "Do you want me to laugh at you at Judgment Day?"
Brett: grumbles.
Brett & Kate pray.
Kate: "Read the scriptures that are asigned."
Brett: Reads out loud the scriptures.
Kate: "So, what should we do?"
Brett: "What does the manual say?"
Kate: " 'Have the children pantomime the story of David and Goliath."
Brett: "Didn't we pantomime last week?"
Kate: "Yes. Any other ideas."
Brett and Kate sit on couch for an hour.
Brett: "Let's just play "Spiritual Hangman"

However, our prayers have been answered. Julie M. Smith, a permablogger on Times and Seasons, not only is a primary teacher in her ward, but she also hometeaches her kids. So, she knows how to engage kids in way that they'll actually learn something. Each week she posts a primary supplement on the blog. The supplements are great. They're simple, utilize different resources, and the kids love it. What's even better, we feel we're actually engaging the kids, instead of the kids responding with the rote Sunday School answers. They've also given us our own ideas for lessons. Check it out.

Daily Report

2006-11-01T19:56:00.000-08:00

No sales today. I did, however, start an ad campaign with Google Adwords. I'm directing my ads to the mountain west region, so any time someone in Utah or Idaho looks up "Missionary Gift" or "LDS Mission," our ad should pop up on the Google search results page.

Kate will be listing Kate's Calendars on eBay. Hopefully, we can get some sales that way.

Today was alright. It was Kate's last job at HSBC. They had to let her go because of restructuring. That should free up some more time for her to work on her history lectures. She's always toiling away on them, but they're all really good. I'm proud of her.

Free Music

2006-11-01T05:57:00.000-08:00

If you like music, especially free customized to your listening tastes music, then you should check out Pandora.com. It's a free radio station that allows you to customize your radio stations to fit your music tastes. You type in a band or a particular song you like and the system will create a music feed that have the same qualites of that band or song. As your listening to the music you can give it either a thumbs up or thumbs down. The site takes that info and can fine tune your station even more.

What makes this all possible is something called the Music Genome Project. Basically Pandora has lots of people listening to music and cataloging all the musical traits of a band or song.

The cost is free. All you have to put up with are the ads on the site and maybe a few commercials between your songs.

Right now I have several stations going on. My favorite is The Rentals and Cake station.

Daily Report

2006-10-31T19:47:00.000-08:00

No sales today.

Kate will be listing Kate's Calendars on eBay. I'll be adding an ad with Google Adwords. Hopefully, that will get some people aware of the product.

Stuff on My Cat

2006-10-31T11:52:00.000-08:00

Stuff + Cats = Awesome.

I love cats. Especially when they do human things, like Tom the cat here. At stuffonmycat.com, you can get your fix of feline hilarity.

Tulsa, OK: Most affordable football town

2006-10-31T07:27:00.000-08:00

Here's one more reason why Tulsa is a great place to live.

I can't wait to go to the TU game next week.

For you scrapbookers out there

2006-10-30T20:48:00.000-08:00

For those of you who don't know, if you want to make to the Celestial Kingdom, you have to scrap book. And I'm not just talking about cut out some newspaper clippings and glue it in a book-that will only get you into the terrestrial kingdom. You have to do the cool theme ones with nice matte paper and cool stickers.

But seriouly, if you really like scapbooking, I found a site put on by some scrapbooking divas at Provo Craft. Reading their posts made me want to start getting together old photos and doing some magic. Check them out.

Who should you buy Kate's Calendars for?

2006-10-30T20:44:00.000-08:00

Anybody! They're especially great for loved ones who are on missions. When your missionary has just a month left, fill out a calendar with lots of notes, and your missionary will have an inspiring message to read each day.

Or, if you know someone who's about to go through the temple for the first time, you can fill out one with scriptures relating to the temple.

Or, even if you're not Mormon, and you have someone far from home, send them a calendar with notes. I'm sure it will brighten their day.

No Sales Today

2006-10-30T20:24:00.000-08:00

First day of the six month challenge resulted in no sales. To be honest I didn't have much time to promote our product because of law school.

Speaking of school.... School is going well. We're in the countdown until finals. I'm getting ready for it.

Kate's doing well with her job. She's enjoying it.

Now, about promoting Kate's Calendars...

The Purpose of this Blog

2006-10-30T10:22:00.000-08:00

The purpose of this blog is to keep track of my wife's and I's goal to sell 900 units of Kate's Calendars in six months.

Kate's Calendars is an idea my wife came up with two years ago. It was inspired from the homemade advent calendars my wife would make me while I was on my mission. Those calendars were some of my best letters I received while I was on my mission. It was nice to open up a little door each day and find an inspiring message from Kate.

We both thought it would be a great idea to take Kate's advent calendar idea and turn it into a product. About two years ago, we sat down and came up with a design for the calendar. We took it to a paper company, gave them our wedding money, and they made the calendars for us. You can see what the finished product looks like here.

Since then, we've been trying to market them during what little free time we have. We've sent out samples to some LDS stores around the country and have heard back from a few of them. The most success we've had in sales was when we posted an add on dearelder.com. However, the cost of advertising with them is expensive and we don't have the money available to use them again. So, we've pretty much been trying to do this solo. Consequently, we haven't had much success.

So, we're taking Kate's Calendars to the blogsphere. We hope this blog serves two purposes. 1) To serve as an accountability tool, and 2) promote Kate's Calendars to help reach our goal of selling 900 of them in six months.

Check out Kate's Calendar's product website and order one for loved one today. You don't have to be Mormon to buy one!