What have we been doing!?!

Lots and Lots of goings on around here. I've finally figured out that I need to update this blog.

First of all, we have been going hot and heavy into developing an online brand that is dedicated to fans of baseball - called Baseballisms.

The mission of the site is to collect video anecdotes from baseball fans - kind of a cross between Current TV and Story Corps. Certainly there are large voices out there regarding the "folklore" of the game, but we felt like there was not enough of an outlet for the everyday fan of the game. We want to hear about favorite Little League moments, family stories, or how it relates to life in general.

We developed the brand, graphics platform, the mission statement .. and have been developing content at a furious pace.

How does that relate to this site at Coastalbean.com? In order to promote a site launch from scratch and to gain some traffic traction, we have jumped into the Social Media marketing pool. That means Facebook profiles, Twittering, del.icio.us, skype ..... all sorts of means necessary to get the brand out there.

And we'll be undertaking the same strategies here.

But -- we've got one major announcement coming soon for this site. We are very close to effectively duplicating the site in a highly targeted demographic.

Look for updates soon!

Affiliate Program through Shareasale

Well we made it through the holiday season in tact for the most part. I think that the overall economic situation in general impacted the volume of business transpiring on the web. CoastalBean, as well as our wholesale partners, saw a fairly flat holiday season in comparison to last year, however one positive aspect for us was that it appeared earlier than previous years - so that made it easier to fulfill the orders. Our product is somewhat of a luxury buy, so rather than ordering 25 pounds of Hawaiian Kona this year, patrons of the bean were ordering smaller amounts.

The one channel that I want to call attention to is our affiliate partners. We partnered with an affiliate marketing management company called Share A Sale to establish a program to allow other web properties to incorporate estate coffee sales on their sites. These affiliates get a commission on every transaction that they send to Coastalbean. These web publishers have sites that range from coffee blogs to coupon sites to gift ideas. Each of the site owners can view a wide variety of merchants on Share A Sale and choose which ones to promote through internet marketing strategies.

To find our program simply find the Gourmet category on Share A Sale and scroll down to the CoastalBean.com description. There you will find our 10% commission offer on all sales including Jamaica Blue Mountain, the world's best coffee! We even provide you with different graphics and banners that you can use to draw attention to the promotions.

Feel free to contact us if you have any questions of ideas about affiliate marketing. As always, thanks for being a Patron of the Bean!

Backup those Files!

Happy Holidays everyone .. we're hot and heavy into the busiest time of the year. Shipments are going out daily so that they arrive in time for the holidays. Then we get a bit of a breather.

In the midst of all this fun, I had a hard drive crash that certainly could have been alot worse.

We decided to move some offices around, and in the process of shutting down and moving my Dell desktop - the Blue Screen of Death appeared, then everything went black. I could no longer boot up the machine! No longer could I get to my documents and programs.

My previous machine had a dual hardrive and a program called Retrospect that would duplicate my harddrive each night, so at most I would be able to swap out drives and function with that. When this particular machine was purchased, the decision was made not to set up this way (an IT decision and I'm not sure why).

Simultaneously, since I started working in the entreprenurial world in 1998 I have used an offsite backup service called @backup. Each night the program fires up and sends the selected folders for storage and retrieval when necessary. It was necessary!

After firing up an old machine that was extra around the office, reloading the latest Quickbooks software and importing the old files from the backup -- I was back in business. Fortunately, just before trying to move the machine I had run a backup of the QB files and they were backed up. Not having those files would have been a major challenge to operating again - phew!

The biggest losses came from Outlook and my WebCeo software. The Outlook backup files are so cumbersome and huge that they didn't fit in the allocated backup space. That .PST file with my old emails and contacts was lost. I do find that the Outlook emails act as historical records of the business. My WebCeo software has a backup function that I wasn't aware of, so now have that set up so my reports can be compared to historical data.

Oh yeah .. one more loss. My ITunes library is gone, so now I can't update my IPod with new music and podcasts that I've subscribed to. I've started looking around and even asked a tech guy at Best Buys .. and don't have a great way to go "backwards". I want to me able to import my IPod library into ITunes rather than the standard direction.

If anyone has any suggestions please let me know.

Happy Holidays

Happy Black Monday Everybody!

Here we are on "Black Monday" - the internet version of the Friday after Thanksgiving called "Black Friday". Although it's not as ominous as it sounds, they are the days that retailers go from red to black on the profit and loss statement. For the bricks and mortar stores all those shoppers milling around on Friday ring the registers, and today as everyone heads back to work with high speed internet access, there will be a few transactions completed.

Many online retailers will post new offers and incentives today in order to entice shoppers to make purchases. Here at Coastalbean.com we offer an incentive all year long - Free UPS Ground Shipping on any order over $50.00. We are also online with Live Chat throughout the day to take care of any questions that arise.

Reports about Friday's sales from retailers have projected sales numbers below previous years, which isn't surprising given the state of credit concerns etc... However there are also some indications that Black Monday may swing things in the positive direction as more and more shoppers take to cyberspace to make purchases rather than brave the crowds on Friday.

Here are Coastalbean.com we are ready and waiting for you. Happy Shopping!