Select Page

April was exciting and it went by faaaaaassssttttt! If you missed it, we launched not one, but TWO, amazing single origin coffees. These coffees are specialty grade and have been known to knock a few people sock’s off with how smooth and delicious they are. It took us a lot of work in April — And we are so glad to have you along for the journey!

Below is a complete breakdown of our April success.

Highlights

The Posts
April 1: How to grow coffee in your backyard! [Gabe] *April Fools Day
April 3: 3 Guys, 2 Beards, 1 Mission [Adam]
April 8: Bring on the coffee: March Update [Chris]
April 10: 4 Cups, 2 Cups, 1 HIGHLY caffeinated crazy man! [Adam]
April 15: More than a Bag! [Gabe]
April 17: Sign up for email updates…You know you want to! [Adam]
April 22: Shop now! [Chris]
April 29: 3 Critical Steps to Brewing Great Coffee [Chris]

Picking the Coffee: 

Adam was tasked with a tall order — Find the best coffee so Mission Arabica is one of the best cup of Joe’s you can buy. I had my doubts, at first, mainly because there are SO many good coffees. I said “One of the best???” Yet, Adam NAILED it! After narrowing it down to 4 cups he wanted to try again, sending samples to Chris and myself, we all agreed our Guatemalan and Costa Rican would land mark our store and coffee distribution for years to come!

Good coffee needs good technique! 

MAbagsWe spent a lot of April preparing to launch the coffee in our store on April 23rd! Once the coffee began to ship, Chris put together a great piece called “3 Critical Steps to Brewing Great Coffee!” Chris’s piece emphasized how Good coffee is EVEN better when it’s brewed correctly- To get the maximum flavor from your cup, I encourage you to read up on this post – Utilizing the right temperatures, tools, and techniques will not only add a little “pep” in your step through the day, but it will give you the “WOW” factor you’re looking for!

 

Goals

To accomplish our mission, we have developed multiple goals that are broken into three phases.

Phase I is our audience growth phase. The purpose of this phase is to tell the story of our journey as three average guys who are stepping out to try and do something tremendous in the world. The goal of this story is two fold:

  1. To inspire others to follow our lead and take that step to do something great in the world. Don’t cut yourself short. Dream BIG and make it happen! You can do it!
  2. Through telling our story, we look to increase the demand for the third world coffee we will be selling. This isn’t as much of a profit thing as it is an impact thing. In other words:
  • The greater our audience – the greater demand there will be for Lao coffee
  •  The greater the demand for Lao coffee – the more plantations we can set up
  •  The more plantations we can set up – the more farmers pulled out of poverty

 

images

What you really need to know is that we CANNOT accomplish this mission without you. So thank you for joining this journey with us and together we will see lives forever changed!

Phase I Updates:

Facebook:
Likes at March 31: 242
Likes at April 30: 286
Increase of: 44 likes (18% increase)
Phase I Goal: 2,000 (1714 more needed)

In regards to social media presence, Facebook has been by far where we have spent the majority of our time and efforts. This is also clearly reflected in the numbers as well. That being said, 2,000 likes is a pretty ambitious goal, but I still believe we can make it.

If you haven’t liked us on Facebook yet, help us reach our goal by clicking on the Like button in the sidebar to the right —>

Also, I wanted to point out the importance of sharing our content. When you like us on Facebook it helps you stay in the loop about what is going on with Mission Arabica. However, when you SHARE our content, it goes out to all your friends, many of which are not Mission Arabica fans (but would be if they only knew about us right 😉 ). So sharing our content and encouraging your friends to check it out is huge for us and we really appreciate it!

Twitter:
Followers at March 31: 40
Followers at April 30: 46
Increase of: 6 (15% increase)
Phase I Goal: 2,000 (954 more needed)

Twitter is a social media platform that neither Chris, Adam, nor I have used prior to Mission Arabica. As such, we have not really spent as much effort utilizing it. However, in the coming months we plan on spending increasing amounts of time here in order to further our cause.

If you haven’t followed us on Twitter yet, click here to join:

Email Subscribers:
Subscribers at March 31: 21
Subscribers at April 30: 37
Increase of: 16 (56% increase)
Phase I Goal: 1,000 (963 more needed)

As mentioned above, this month we really focused on our Facebook growth and as such, not as much focus was placed on our growing our email subscriber list. However we do plan on increasing our efforts in this area in May to help accomplish our phase 1 goal. Each month we have steadily focused in this area.

That being said, we are honored by everyone that takes the time to visit our site and like/follow us on social media, but I would have to say that our email subscribers hold a really special place in our hearts because they have really gone above and beyond to say, “Yes, I like what you are doing and I want you to keep me informed by email.” I don’t know about you, but in this age of spam emails, I am not one to just go around and sign up for a bunch of mailing lists unless I really believe the content of those emails will be worth while.

We recognize that and therefore we do our very best to respect your inbox by typically only sending out one email per week with updates from the site. However, there really are more perks than that. Email subscribers are sort of on the Mission Arabica VIP list so for example, once our coffee sales go live, our email subscribers will definitely get some special bonuses.

The best part is that becoming an email subscriber is absolutely free. So if you are already an email subscriber: Thank You. But if you are not, it is super easy to sign up, just do so in the box below this paragraph.
[ois skin=”Welcome Page Opt In”]

Total Coffee Sales:
Bags Shipped in April: 24
Mugs Shipped in April: 13

As mentioned, On April 23rd, we launched the Mission Arabica store, which features two amazing single origin Mission Arabica Coffees, along with a very cool Mission Arabica Coffee mug. While we have been utilizing Affiliate marketing, and will continue to, we realize that bringing our own product to our consumers is a key for our growth. We are currently searching for additional coffees to add to our store, along with many unique coffee tools and products to help in your coffee adventures.

In the store, you will find the Guatemalan and Costa Rican.

  • The Guatemalan is a creamy full bodied coffee that is grown by farmer Juan Luis Varrios. It is a medium coffee that is smooth and enjoyable.
  • The Costa Rican is grown by Oscar Moreira and wife Lydia. In this medium coffee, your taste buds come to life with a strong balanced flavor with a cocoa nib finish.

If you haven’t ordered your first of many bags, you can click here. We are very passionate about our coffee and have no doubt you’ll love it as much as we do.

Affiliate Income:

amazon-1The other aspect of Phase I is developing affiliate income to help us cover some Mission Arabica expenses. If you are not familiar, affiliate income is basically a commission for sending someone to a sales page of a website. If that person then goes on to buy something, we will receive an affiliate commission. We currently do this with Amazon. Whenever we recommend a product on our site and link to Amazon for that product, we will receive a commission if you go ahead and purchase the product.

The great thing is that this does not increase the cost of the product you are purchasing and this commission is not limited to just the product we linked to. For example, if we link to a coffee pot and you click on the link, but then end up purchasing a TV, we will still receive the commission on the TV as well.

Therefore, a super easy way to help out is when you are going to buy something on Amazon, just go through our affiliate link first. It doesn’t cost you anything extra and Mission Arabica will end up receiving about 5% of the sale.

In the month of April we earned an affiliate commission of $39.00 ($50.97 in March)

To make this even easier for you, just go ahead and bookmark/favorite this link and whenever you want to go purchase something from Amazon, just use this saved link for your convenience and we will still get credit for the sale.
http://amzn.to/1gh9Tyc
If you are not sure how to bookmark a link, Adam made a video to show you how. Just click here.

Total Site Visits in April: 465 (447 in March)

We are steadily keeping in the mid-400’s and are working to create EPIC content that keeps you coming back! We have exciting guest blogs coming your way, plus we are beginning to establish a Coffee 101 section which will host recipe’s, tidbits, and our Coffee Brewing tips & tricks.

Phase II:

This phase will mainly focus around starting to buy and sell coffee from existing farmers as well as taking a trip to Laos.

By selling our own coffee (from Central America) it will be a great first step to eventually selling Lao coffee because we will already have our sales and distribution network setup. We have also been making some preliminary plans to start purchasing green coffee (unfrosted) from some existing farms in Laos that we know of and to even take a trip to Laos in early 2015. We currently are roasting samples from Laos and will be testing them soon!

Phase III:

This phase is primarily focused on actually setting up a coffee plantation. This is really the primary goal of what we are trying to accomplish, but more details of this will become available once we have made a trip to Laos. In the mean time we are continuing to learn about coffee and coffee agriculture to help turn this vision into a reality.

Going Forward

So as you can see, it has been a busy month and we have lots of great things we are working on. I’m definitely looking forward to having a great May and excited to see where this journey takes us.

Remember, we cannot do this without you! So sign up for our email list and share our posts with your friends on Facebook. We appreciate you more than you know and would also love the chance to interact with you, so drop us a line in the comments or on social media as we would love to get to know you better.

Thanks for joining this journey with us!