Show HN: Themes and styles for SQL reporting services

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5604187
by xm1994 • 13 years ago
12 6 13 years ago

Made this a few months ago (http://reportsoup.com).

Think of it as a bootstrap for Microsoft's SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) reporting tool. Lets you share styles/fonts/elements across reports. I also included a few report templates to get you started.

This is my first run at a digital product and I tried to pick something I'm somewhat familiar with and saw a need for myself. Honestly though I'm just happy to have shipped something! While I never had the courage to actually "launch" it... what I actually did is run an adwords campaign for a few days, but paying almost $1 CPC with a conversion rate of 1% seems like a good way to lose money.

I started working on some other projects, then last week 4 sales came in (with the adwords campaign off) and I started getting a little excited.. and couldn't stop thinking of some things I could do to keep it alive:

1. Launch a more efficient adwords campaign.

2. Write some quality content: General tips on designing/creating business reports e.g. color selection, fonts, etc. and get some nice (free!) organic traffic.

3. Hire a designer and build some great looking report templates.

4. Offer a free trial. (I know patio11 would jump all over this one, I was worried about people stealing the templates and sql tables, but I realize now it doesn't really matter).

Or... perhaps I should just opensource it.

Suggestions or comments on any of the above would be appreciated. And don't pull any punches HN!

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