We bolted into May with some AWESOME presentations on brewing. It amazes me that coffee can be “Okay,” “Good,” or “WOWSERS!” just by how you brew it — Add in the variations you can do with cold brewing, and coffee really becomes an art. As we continue to seek out the best coffees to add to our shop, we want to thank you for joining us — We have a passion for coffee and want you to be apart of it.
Below is a complete breakdown of our how May unfolded.
Highlights
The Posts
May 6: 52 Cups with Megan Gebhart [Gabe]
May 13: Best Brew Methods: The Aeropress [Adam]
May 20: One Crazy Day [Chris]
May 22: April Update: The Launch [Gabe]
May 25: New Website Design Unveiled
May 27: Beat the Summer: Toddy Cold Brew Edition [Gabe]
52 Cups:Â
Megan Gebhart joined us for an awesome insight on her experience starting 52 cups. Megan has been a friend of Mission Arabica’s since the launch and her story is inspiring, as she started with a goal of having a simple cup of coffee with someone new once a week for an entire year! That goal turned into a long term endeavor for her and she’s traveling throughout the world with her story. She opens up and shares her own experiences in Laos and how they changed her life!
Learn the AeroPress Way with Adam!
Another great highlight this month was when Adam welcomes you into his home to show you how he brews great coffee with an Aeropress. Â You can check it out here:
Click Here if the Video above isn’t displayed in your browser!
Want an Aeropress of your own? Â You can pick one up from Amazon here.
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:
- 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!
- 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
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 April 30: 286
Likes at May 31: 298
Increase of: 12Â likes (4.1% increase)
Phase I Goal: 2,000 (1702 more needed)
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 April 30: 46
Followers at May 31:Â 56
Increase of:Â 10Â (22% increase)
Phase I Goal: 2,000 (1944Â more needed)
If you haven’t followed us on Twitter yet, just click here:
Follow @MissionArabica
Email Subscribers:
Subscribers at April 30:Â 37
Subscribers at May 31:Â 38
Increase of: 1Â (2.7% increase)
Phase I Goal: 1,000 (962 more needed)
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, so they also get great perks like special discount codes for big savings in the Mission Arabica shop and early access to new products!
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 May:Â 2
Mugs Shipped in May:Â 0
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. Our total bags shipped slowed down in May, as we focused on getting our product wholesale for coffee shops and other organizations. We’re already seeing stronger results in June, but that is mainly just balancing our efforts between wholesale and meeting individual needs.
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.
- SPOILER: The Laos AA and Laos Peaberry JUST hit the Store (June 9th) -Â What good is a recap without giving a glimpse into the future with some “breaking news” in it?
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:
The 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.
Typically we would provide May’s total sales; However, they are not updated for the full month yet. (Total goal in April was $39.00)
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 May: 356Â (465 in April)
With the launch of our updated website in late May, we believe we made it easier to follow our vision and be apart of what we are doing. Chris worked really hard on the website and it looks awesome! The layout is intended to take you step-by-step in what we are doing and how we are doing it. We are excited about the new website and have had good feedback on its layout. Have an idea that you think can help us? Let us know!
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.
It has been awesome to make significant progress in this area by buying and selling coffee from Costa Rica and Guatemala in April and now we are offering coffee from Laos (launched June just this week!).  We are so much farther along at this point in time than we ever anticipated and we are so grateful that you help make this possible!
The only other aspect to phase II that we need to complete is our trip to Laos. Â We are currently planning on doing that early 2015 and will keep you updated as more info comes available!
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 continue to have lots of great things we are working on. We are definitely looking forward to having a great June with the launch of two new coffees and we continue to love the journey we are all apart of.
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!