Page 1 of 2

R1200R owners calendar for 2013?

Posted: Sun Nov 11, 2012 6:07 pm
by deilenberger
We did this a few times back a few years ago, but the chap who did it went to a different bike I believe. He was going to send me the info about how he did it, but that never really happened either.

It was a calendar I really enjoyed (still have it actually..) It was done on a contest basis.. everyone submitted one or two of their favorite photos of their R1200Rs and we all voted on which ones should be on the calendar. In the case of the ones we did - the calendars were preordered, then delivered when they were ready. It took a bit of time to get them IIRC.. but that didn't matter since my bike wasn't the January bike :)

I'm thinking this might be fun to do again. I poked around a bit - and found that single copies of a calendar using customers photos can be had for around $25/each (for a 12 month calendar, a bit more for an 18 month calendar.) If any quantities are brought into the equation - the price drops significantly.

Some details can be found on: http://www.shutterfly.com/calendars/wal ... 6&mpch=ads and http://smartpress.com/offering/custom-s ... #c=79&cp=1 and http://www.calendars.com/personalcalend ... 2-_-Custom

So - what to do? I'm willing to try coordinating this project (perhaps dragooning Bill Webster in to help since he's a pro..) but need some guidance from the members.

My thoughts are - we commit to 25 calendars (which brings the price per down) but commit to pay $25/each (and any shipping price - if any) with any excess going to this boards funds that help keep it running. If we have more then 25 - we may be able to donate more to the forum. In order to do this - I think we should require anyone submitting photos for the calendar to commit to buying at least one calendar (before the voting is done.)

I could also try contacting some of the printing houses to see if we pay for a setup charge if people could then order calendars as they want them.. but this requires some outlay for the setup charge by someone, and leaves no excess to donate to the forum.

Most of the calendar makers allow for adding custom dates to the calendars, so I'd suggest we all get some lists together of rallies/events we're going to where we might hope to meet up with other R12R owners, and we include those on the calendar.

Thoughts? Ideas? Screams of Oh-No!?

BTW - for our European members, we can look into a metric calendar for you with deca-weeks and the 100 day months.. :badgrin:

Re: R1200R owners calendar for 2013?

Posted: Sun Nov 11, 2012 7:35 pm
by atractaspis
Count me in. I will buy one.

Photography is one of my hobbies and I made some calendars of desert scenes and animals through vistaprint ... Not as fancy maybe as you had in mind but they were pretty good quality calendars for a great price.

As long as you use month names and not numbers there shouldn't be much difference for European vs American calendars. I made mine for my friends back at home (Austria) and the States. Worked fine for both without having to print two different versions (which would have made it more expensive).

Thanks for starting this project =D>

Re: R1200R owners calendar for 2013?

Posted: Sun Nov 11, 2012 7:54 pm
by MTBeemer
I'm in. Would prefer 18 month but will go for 12.

Re: R1200R owners calendar for 2013?

Posted: Sun Nov 11, 2012 9:01 pm
by jkhomes
I am in. Can they be ordered on Shutterfly individually? Vistaprint might be a good option too at $7.99.

Re: R1200R owners calendar for 2013?

Posted: Sun Nov 11, 2012 11:16 pm
by MTBeemer
And absolutely nooooo man-thongs.

Re: R1200R owners calendar for 2013?

Posted: Mon Nov 12, 2012 12:48 am
by websterize
Don, don't know about "pro," but am happy to help on photo processing and management. (First rule of calendars: landscape orientation is ideal.) I've not bought from Vistaprint or can vouch for their print quality, but $8/calendar is a deal. Ideally, you could create one with a unique ID to share with members, who could place their orders directly with Vistaprint. Is that how they work? The administrator of the previous calendars, Rocket, ran the calendars that way. Seems like the least hassle for everyone.

Re: R1200R owners calendar for 2013?

Posted: Mon Nov 12, 2012 8:57 am
by Bamblys
MTBeemer wrote:And absolutely nooooo man-thongs.
I'm out then. I'm not posing completely nude. I feel like I have to cover up a little bit.

Re: R1200R owners calendar for 2013?

Posted: Mon Nov 12, 2012 12:07 pm
by deilenberger
Hadn't looked at VistaPrint, just did.

Single quantity wall calender (gray grid) - $15.99
25 quantity wall calendar (gray grid) - $329.99 / 25 = $13.16 each

Was there a discount deal I didn't find?

Re: R1200R owners calendar for 2013?

Posted: Mon Nov 12, 2012 12:15 pm
by deilenberger
I poked around help at VistaPrint - and I don't see an option for us putting together a calendar and then letting individual members order it (which would be wonderful since it wouldn't require any book-keeping or calendar mailing on my part..)

What they offer is group-vouchers, where you buy XX copies of the calendar for $$$ which can then be ordered from them by a purchaser submitting a voucher issued by whoever puts the group/calendar together. It isn't clear how shipping is handled with this option, but I'd make a WAG that it would be on the purchaser to pay the shipping cost. I didn't see any option to price the calendar so a donation could be made to the forum, but I guess we could do that at our end - charging more then "list" price for the calendar before you get the voucher.

I saw the same sort of scheme on one of the other calendar places I looked at. If anyone knows of a place that allows us to setup the calendar buy and have them handle the entire money part - please let us know. Doing it with one person collecting the $$ (and then issuing vouchers) means having to use something like PayPal to collect the $$ - and they of course want their fee, so that's more money the forum wouldn't be getting.

More ideas are welcome..

Re: R1200R owners calendar for 2013?

Posted: Mon Nov 12, 2012 12:25 pm
by atractaspis
deilenberger wrote:Hadn't looked at VistaPrint, just did.

Single quantity wall calender (gray grid) - $15.99
25 quantity wall calendar (gray grid) - $329.99 / 25 = $13.16 each

Was there a discount deal I didn't find?

This the the page that shows a 50% off deal:

http://www.vistaprint.com/personalized- ... 1484&GNF=1

Re: R1200R owners calendar for 2013?

Posted: Mon Nov 12, 2012 12:34 pm
by deilenberger
Unfortunately - for me - that page leads to: http://www.vistaprint.com/photo-calenda ... nfoPFID389 which has the same prices I listed above. I suspect there is a discount code that must be entered someplace on the original page, and I don't have it.

Re: R1200R owners calendar for 2013?

Posted: Mon Nov 12, 2012 1:06 pm
by atractaspis
deilenberger wrote: Single quantity wall calender (gray grid) - $15.99
25 quantity wall calendar (gray grid) - $329.99 / 25 = $13.16 each

I think if every calendar is shipped separately to a different address it probably wouldn't work to use a quantity discount. But I might be wrong.

Re: R1200R owners calendar for 2013?

Posted: Mon Nov 12, 2012 1:08 pm
by atractaspis
deilenberger wrote:Unfortunately - for me - that page leads to: http://www.vistaprint.com/photo-calenda ... nfoPFID389 which has the same prices I listed above. I suspect there is a discount code that must be entered someplace on the original page, and I don't have it.
hmm.. I didn't enter a discount code.. when I click on the link you sent above it shows this right on top of the page: (15.99 is crossed out and replaced with 7.99)

Calendars
Starting at $15.99 $7.99
Make a treasured gift for friends and family
Customize each month with a different photo
Use your photos or choose from our complete calendars
Add text, even to individual calendar dates
Choose any starting month/year

Re: R1200R owners calendar for 2013?

Posted: Mon Nov 12, 2012 2:06 pm
by angellr
atractaspis wrote:
deilenberger wrote:Unfortunately - for me - that page leads to: http://www.vistaprint.com/photo-calenda ... nfoPFID389 which has the same prices I listed above. I suspect there is a discount code that must be entered someplace on the original page, and I don't have it.
hmm.. I didn't enter a discount code.. when I click on the link you sent above it shows this right on top of the page: (15.99 is crossed out and replaced with 7.99)

Calendars
Starting at $15.99 $7.99
Make a treasured gift for friends and family
Customize each month with a different photo
Use your photos or choose from our complete calendars
Add text, even to individual calendar dates
Choose any starting month/year
MIne was $11.99 ... I suspect they are dynamically capturing a segment based on the cookies in your browser. I fired up the link in a "virgin" browser and got $7.99 with the same link. So, if we do this, someone just needs to "order" the calendar with a fresh browser.

Re: R1200R owners calendar for 2013?

Posted: Mon Nov 12, 2012 6:26 pm
by atractaspis
I just went into my vistaprint account to see what type of calendar I had made last year.. I went with the cheapest option. The Glossy paper stock ..there is also a higher quality version glossy card stock for some extra $$ and when I tried to get a copy of the same one from last year and went to check out there was also an extra mailing charge... Now when going into my account there were even more deals.. I got one calendar for free and then the second for 7.99$ ... so I can't quite figure out how much it would cost per person to have this done here.

If one person creates the calendar and creates an account and we could have people who want a calendar send a PM to whoever is in charge of it (Don?) and request one (include their shipping address, etc)... and once the person who wanted one donated 25$ to the forum the person in charge can go online and ship it to that particular person.. Did I make any sense? 8-[ Operating on 2 hours of sleep and 10 hours of staring into the computer at work today :shock:

So the donation is the payment and whoever get those donations can use that for purchasing the calendars from the site and ship it individually...

Ok.. I give up trying to make any sense.. I need coffee and food

Here is a quick picture I snapped with my phone of the calendar (cheapest version) I made last year using vistaprint


Image

Re: R1200R owners calendar for 2013?

Posted: Thu Nov 15, 2012 12:22 pm
by Chop96
I'm in for ordering one whichever way the group decides. :D

Re: R1200R owners calendar for 2013?

Posted: Thu Nov 15, 2012 7:25 pm
by jkhomes
So how do we go forward on this? Is Websterize going to work on it? I am happy to submit a couple photos for consideration.

I can swing $15.99 if the $7.99 does not work out.

Re: R1200R owners calendar for 2013?

Posted: Fri Nov 16, 2012 8:15 am
by Karamazov
I'm in at $25 or less.

Re: R1200R owners calendar for 2013?

Posted: Fri Nov 16, 2012 6:10 pm
by deilenberger
Looks so far 7 people committed. Part of the goal is also to get a few bucks/calendar to help support the forum.. so if it's our cost of something like $15.99+shipping, figure the overall cost including the forum's share at something like $25 (for an 18 month calendar. Not awful - $1.40 or so a month.

Meanwhile - we need:

- More commitments by people - we don't make the minimum number for any discount, and it's a lot of work for 7 calendars
- A KOTL (Keeper of the List)

List so far:

1. Me - Don Eilenberger
2. Bill Webster
3. atractaspis
4. MTBeemer
5. jkhomes
6. Chop96
7. Karamazov

Who else is in? Figure $25 (or perhaps less).. and that would probably include shipping in the US.

Re: R1200R owners calendar for 2013?

Posted: Fri Nov 16, 2012 7:17 pm
by R12RnHouston
I'm in for one!

David