From martin at easyweb.co.uk Wed Jun 18 16:49:18 2003 From: martin at easyweb.co.uk (Martin) Date: Wed, 18 Jun 2003 16:49:18 +0100 (BST) Subject: [Marketing] evolt.org giving wall Message-ID: Meant to mention this the other week, but forgot. I spent a wee bit of time throwing together this: http://www.acornparenting.org:8080/donation_wall It's a proof of concept of the donation wall thingy, running on the eouk zope server. It already supports: 1) multi-currency donations 2) donations in kind 3) anonymous donors 4) donors with or without an existing weo account 5) batching (it's a soft limit, set to 2 atm) with orphan control 6) 1-off & regular donations 7) role-based security 8) Through the web management of donations What it doesn't do is: 1) Total donations 2) Calculate and a donations bar 3) auto-convert currencies 4) look pretty enough 5) enable searching for and direct URL viewing of any given donation (1) and (2) are fairly trivial when I get a moment (3) is a non-starter I think - it's doable but not particularly easily (5) searching is probably doable, but not without starting again. Direct URL viewing should be possible too. (4) is where I need help. For those interested, the presentation layer is a couple of simple Zope Page Templates, which should be manageable via WebDAV http://www.zope.org/Documentation/Books/ZopeBook/current/ZPT.stx Cheers Martin -- "Names, once they are in common use, quickly become mere sounds, their etymology being buried, like so many of the earth's marvels, beneath the dust of habit." - Salman Rushdie From martin at easyweb.co.uk Tue Jun 24 18:48:11 2003 From: martin at easyweb.co.uk (Martin Burns) Date: Tue, 24 Jun 2003 18:48:11 +0100 Subject: [Marketing] evolt.org giving wall In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <0598ECA2-A66C-11D7-B8F5-000A959F6A30@easyweb.co.uk> On Wednesday, June 18, 2003, at 04:49 pm, Martin wrote: > I spent a wee bit of time throwing together this: > http://www.acornparenting.org:8080/donation_wall erm... anyone actually look at this? Cheers Martin From david at gigawatt.com Thu Jun 26 15:48:31 2003 From: david at gigawatt.com (David Kaufman) Date: Thu, 26 Jun 2003 10:48:31 -0400 Subject: [Marketing] the future of evolt gear Message-ID: <002901c33bf2$03e57680$1c06040a@david> re: fund-raising, marketing and the "evolt gear store" that i setup on http://www.cafeshops.com/evoltgear according to CafePress, a commission check did go out to Evolt, attn: Marlene, to the Adelphi road address, for $62.63 on June 15th. Elfur or Marlene, can you confirm that it was received and cleared okay? Not that I don't trust Cafepress, of course. it's just that i don't trust Cafepress, of course :-) there's another $67.65 coming down the pipe, but unfortunately that's the total commissions for the two months, May and June, *after* the "initial launch" sales in April. so sales are down 50% :-( i know it's not a lot of *money* but it seems to me that the concept (members and well-wishers donating to an NPO by buying promotional goods) has the potential to result in a fairly steady *stream* of monthly income, if it were _sustainable_. so i'm interested in what you all think would make such a thing as this sustainable, from a marketing perspective. in other words: *besides* the technical issues, and business decisions we might make (that would be transparent to the members) what steps could we take customer-experience wise, to keep members (and theList subscribers, or other folks who just visit and are interested in the articles, browsers, etc on the website) interested and visiting the store and finding stuff they'd feel good about buying, and giving back to evolt? i'm thinking of the free CafePress store as merely a "proof of concept". it proved that on one particular week in April, one thread on the List can spawn enough interest and buzz to drive members to spend $267.97 on items fairly over-priced (but cool looking!) items... why? what is the value proposition? a cheap $5.00 T-Shirt, or a standard $3.00 coffee mug? do people not mind over-paying the other $15 bucks (or more -- they're already over-priced by Cafepress, plus our $5.01 commission) for just: a nifty, beautiful evolt.org logo (possibly with a side order of geek-wise humor) and the warm fuzzy feeling people get from donating to a good cause? i can't help but feel that if we could increase the selection *and* keep new products with new graphics (and new humor) coming frequently, that the "business issues" of replacing CafePress's "associate" or "reseller" model with our own modest amount of inventory and fulfillment, we could be taking home the lion's share of that $267 dollar per *week* peek potential. do you think that such a significant potential even exists? or that it was merely a one-time novelty thing that cannot be reproduced or sustained by any amount of product selection, pricing and promotion? what could we, can we or should we do next? some things i've been tossing around in the darkness of my head are: 1. scrap it... ? 2. add product, graphic and humor selection (the http://thinkgeek.com site, for instance, keeps me browsing for quite some time every time i go up there. i don't go there often, but i do visit repeatedly, say every other month, and have bought stuff on several (certainly not most) occasions. it seems to have the very same target market as we do, in short, the technically oriented and internet-savvy professional. i think ThinkGeek's wide selection of products, content (and wide selections of combinations thereof) is what inspires me as to what evolt.org could do. evolt also has the added "value" that proceeds go to an excellent not-for-profit cause, that the technically oriented and internet-savvy professional already benefits from! 3. create some sort of interactive community site (evolt members only?) that allows users to create and submit content, kinda like cafepress does (but better, of course :-)) to contribute their own graphic designs and/or humorous text ideas to whatever product(s) they want. these customized products could then be ordered immediately by them and other members, but would only be placed into the "public store" for purchase by anyone, after some type of approval process -- maybe administrator moderation or after receiving a number of "votes" of approval, from other members. as you may have guessed i don't want to scrap it :-) but at 50% decrease in sales per month, well, it wouldd just somewhat suck for it to effectively scrap itself. please don't hold back on any thoughts, ideas or perceptions you may have that that may be rumbling around in the darkness or your collective heads to suggest or point out that i can better guage my need for a reality check. am i wasting my time? PS: (to DesDev list) who can i possibly persuade to make a small update to the public "Help Support evolt.org" page: http://evolt.org/help_support_evolt ? just a mention of the "evolt gear store", and a link to http://www.cafeshops.com/evoltgear would be just great! thanks, -dave From r937 at interlog.com Fri Jun 27 02:10:44 2003 From: r937 at interlog.com (rudy) Date: Thu, 26 Jun 2003 21:10:44 -0400 Subject: [Marketing] the future of evolt gear References: <002901c33bf2$03e57680$1c06040a@david> Message-ID: <00b801c33c48$f0bbd7a0$7f609c18@r9373j4yqbe8dy> > as you may have guessed i don't want to scrap it :-) david, the time and energy you put into this is appreciated > am i wasting my time? nope and thanks rudy