an idea to improve steepster
I would like to support Steepster too. I think a better way would be for Steepster to commission a puerh cake and have every one of us buy it!
Haha, what AllanK said! Or Swag like t-shirts and mugs that say Steepster. I’d love to have memorabilia like that, plus it’s free advertising. The Steepster tea bags we get from the monthly boxes don’t get seen by other people. T-shirts and travel mugs might generate conversation and more traffic.
I don’t remember which site it is, but there is one where you can imprint a design of your liking and they even do the Thermos brand Tea Travel mugs.
Steepster t-shirts, mugs, travel mugs, tote bags, etc. all sound like possibilities!
Whatever merchandise interests the majority of our community.
Is swag really dirty word? I always thought it meant stuff used to show off or advertise. At least that’s how it’s used colloquially. You’re right though, the proper term is merchandise
Flyawaybirdie, I like your travel mug idea. They’re great at home while you’re online, at work, or on the go. I agree, it might generate conversation and more traffic.
How about one of these with a bold proud Steepster logo?
- http://www.consumersearch.com/travel-mugs/zojirushi-stainless-steel-mug
- http://www.zojirushi.com/products/smkhe
- http://www.zojirushi.com/products/smkb
As a large group buy, perhaps even a quantity discount?
It’s possible that one or more favorite Steepster tea suppliers may wish to support Steepster merchandise in exchange for adding their logo.
Let me put on my hipster glasses ‘I still say swag and yolo, but I do it ironically’
Anyway
I would totally buy steepster swag, I would probably go for a shirt or something along those lines since I rarely use mugs anymore. Now if there was a Steepster gaiwan or dainty little teacup and saucer I would jump on that like it was candy.
ah, I see you’re stuck in 2013, Amanda :p.
i would maybe buy a gaiwan or gongfu teacup. i’m not huge on branding though
Now that I know everyone hates it so much, I am going to find a way to work it into everyday conversations, just for fun. :)
Sarsonator, I do that…I mainly started using YOLO (specifically as a verb) wrongly to annoy my boyfriend.
Actually apt I am more stuck in a strange combination of 1987, 1999, and 1898…I get confused sometimes :P
looseTman, so funny, I JUST bought one of those mugs off Amazon last night. The price there fluctuates alot and it was $25 and change yesterday- but to be fair I’ve been watching that mug for almost two years now. It was back up to $29 today which is about normal.
I was thinking even like the Libre tea mug, or if Mandala tea wants to do their tea mug (I don’t mind two logos on one item for a partnership).
I think it’s CafePress that has the partnership with Thermos, they have an entire page dedicated to the products. http://www.cafepress.com/+thermos
But yeah, mugs, t-shirts, tote bags, the whole deal would depend on whoever runs Steepster. I feel like those things are a little more attractive to the average user than depending on just tea sales. I think of Steepster as a Tea Community before a Tea Store.
“I JUST bought one of those mugs off Amazon last night.” – Cool! What are the odds?
Please add a review of it here: http://steepster.com/teaware/zojirushi/46361-sm-khe48-16-oz-ss-vacuum-bottles or here: http://steepster.com/teaware/zojirushi/44057-sm-kb48tm-16-oz-vacuum-ss-travel-mug.
" I think of Steepster as a Tea Community before a Tea Store."
Agreed, and teaware merchandise celebrates and communicates that community & connection to those with whom we share our daily lives – spreading the word about Steepster and its sponsor(s).
Will do! But with Amazon free shipping it’ll be weeks before it even gets to me.
I think the main problem with a monthly fee is it would keep new users away. I would still belong if it were a small annual fee but some would not bother, especially those who don’t use it as much. I dropped at least one other website because of the small annual fee, I wasn’t using the website it didn’t make sense to pay a fee. If Steepster started selling tea ware or increased their line of tea, I would definitely buy.
Agreed. I’m sure many regular users including myself would have no problem making a voluntary donation or even a nominal subscription fee but it would deter many newcomers.
As much as I dislike seeing ads, that’s the business model of the Internet and Steepster may have to follow suit if they want to be able to pay the bills and grow. The site doesn’t have to be littered with ads, just a few here and there could be enough. And people might not mind it if the advertising was tea related.
Thanks to all for the creative suggestions and solutions to help keep Steepster up and running. To let you know we have had and/or considered many of these ideas in the past, and have no plans to make the site pay-to-use.
The reason we haven’t persued any of these, specifically donations, is that we don’t believe it will have a significant enough impact on our resource availablity to be worth the cost to our users. Don’t get me wrong, we certainly appreciate that you guys are so awesome and volunteer to donate, but we also don’t want you to burn out our hardcore user base if we don’t think it’s going to make the difference we need it to.
With that said, we continue to work to keep growing Steepster in a sustainable way so that it can support continued investment on our part and growth for the site/community in general.
It might help just to have extra hands to deal with spammers. I thought at one point there was talk of having a few more admins around who could help out.
Like I said, I’m low on budget, and ironically spend too much on tea as it is. I can understand what you mean. I hope you figure this out. Peace, and tea.
I have wondered if you could offer affiliate links for tea sites that offer them. We could click on them when we make a purchase with those companies and a tiny percentage of the sales would go to help with the site costs/maintenance, etc. A good place to put those links would be in the area on the tea pages that currently shows tea “currently unavailable”. A link could be provided there for the tea company that sells that particular tea, and if an if that tea company offers affiliate links that would be put there.
As an example, exmormon.org had to get donations from anybody that could. They met their goal. why not let people donate every four months, and donate however much you can? They used paypal, I think? Yes, I’m an exmo, and I love tea!! I’m on a very low budget (ironically I spend too much on tea), albeit we should donate what we can.
Yeah but this is a for-profit business, isn’t it? The point of the forum is to bring in business, as well as to be social. I mean, let’s be honest, the forum serves its purpose just as Teachat does for Adagio. Though for me this site is more fun because of all the features.
Steepster selling tea regularly is actually really new. Even Steepster Select was scrapped for 2-ish years. For a long time it was purely social with no profit, and in the last year or so has started to include sales with Select and now the general tea store.
Might well be, but reading Jason’s post above it is clear from the business language what the viewpoint behind the site is. How we choose to use the site is of course our own decision. The real investment purpose is realized in the high placement on search engines which is achieved via high volume of user-generated content, which gives the site monetary value that can be potentially directed.
BTW, with the recent server change we also added moderator accounts. Nothing fancy, but will allow other people to get rid of spam, so the forums stay cleaner and you don’t have to wait for me. I’ll be sending more info soon.
I belong to another forum that has an option to donate ($20/yr), and I always do. When you donate, you get additional services, like a larger message box and an icon photo. Probably other stuff that I’ve forgotten. But even if there weren’t perks, I would donate because I can spare the $20 and I appreciate the forum. And it doesn’t bother me that others can’t or won’t donate. Anyway….I would donate $12/year to keep this forum running well and keep the valuable tea reviews available for the public.
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