USSM Swag open question
DMZ · November 21, 2006 at 2:56 pm · Filed Under Site information
So we’re making, approximately,
diddly
–
squat
on USSM stuff @ Cafepress (viewable here). We would like, I’d say, to make enough to pay at least Cafe Press’ fee for running the store. Here’s my question for you, dear readers: are there things we should be offering? Pushing them more? New designs? Or are we better off just punting the shop entirely if the items are going to be Cafe Press-level expensive?
I know people have suggested that we print off a huge batch of them ourselves and sell them, but the problem is that if we can, we’d like to avoid being in the fulfillment business, which is one of the great attractions of using some place like CP. Though, if it was lucrative enough, I’d certainly consider it.
Nice Bloom County reference. Anyway, I won’t buy Cafe Press stuff, the shirts last for about three washings in my experience. I’ve donated directly and will continue to do so, and I’d cheerfully buy a non-Cafe Press shirt.
For similar reasons to what you’re experiencing, I’m not a fan of Cafe Press. We print an anthology once a year and we JUST break even. Isn’t there a version, though, of CP that is free? Maybe trim back on the merchandise so you’re only doing the basics that are allowed and occasionally rotate stuff in and out as occasions warrant.
Well that’s not much of an endorsement…
I don’t know how your traffic shakes out, but it feels like there’s maybe about 30-40 fairly regular posters — if everybody bought one shirt it probably wouldn’t amount to one sale per month over 3-4 years. (Completely and totally unsubstantiated figures, I know.)
For reference, I just checked out the Penny Arcade T-shirts. (They’re local too, the webcomic guys.) It looks like most of those run 18 bucks, and the designs are much bolder and more stylized too.
Assuming somebody like SoSH sells T-shirts, you oughta contact them and see how many they sell. (Course, that’s the Red Sox, and it’s probably a safe assumption that there’s 10x as many Red Sox fans as M’s, particularly lately.)
I don’t know how your traffic shakes out, but it feels like there’s maybe about 30-40 fairly regular posters — if everybody bought one shirt it probably wouldn’t amount to one sale per month over 3-4 years. (Completely and totally unsubstantiated figures, I know.)
WAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.
Seriously, were you not around here for the server problems? At all?
Okay, but here’s the problem: PA, as much as I love them, has someone who does nothing but their T-shirts. We can’t do that.
I bought a shirt. I’m happy to buy more.
Frankly, I have no experience with Cafepress but I just don’t like what you offer in terms of logos.
I personally would buy some stuff if they had funny sayings on the back. You know, inside references. For example:
“My Sample Size is bigger than yours”
“xFIP > ERA”
“No More Right Handed Power….Please!”
A graphic of WFB “igniting” his bat
These are just things off the top of my head. I’m sure there are more creative people here that could suggest ideas. Maybe offer a free t-shirt to those that come up with the best slogan.
The swag is expensive and the designs are kinda dull and don’t have much of a sense of humor. Pare down your t-shirt offerings to one or two. Add a knit cap and a used mechanic’s jacket to the line (one woven patch can be applied to both) and take it in-house. If you’re not selling that much it’s not going to be that much of a fulfillment hassle. You can get t-shirts printed by small local shops for very little.
#7– I think we had a run of t-shirt slogans during the late summer…
#9 – I don’t remember this, but i’m fairly new to USSM as well.
I think the thing here is that there is so much humour on this site and it should show up in the merchandise.
Sure, I’ve seen the server problems.
I was just thinking that if someone were to buy a T-shirt it’d probably be someone who averaged say 3 posts per week over a long period of time. That’s about what I would call your “core” group. I recognize most of the names that post, and it sure feels like there’s not 50 people that exceed that level of activity. Obviously, on this website there’s no way for users to see how many concurrent “guests” are lurking around, so I don’t know what your real traffic numbers are.
I dunno, the point of my previous post was: A website devoted to the analysis of the M’s organization is a pretty limited niche market.
Heck, it might be you’d sell more mechandise if you all you ever talked about is how wonderful the M’s are — just a total fandom site.
Course, then you’d have to go throw up.
What happened to the “shirt of the month”? I’m so sick of people asking me about the traffic in McCall…
Wow, was a navy blue version of the JoelE script logo shirt always available? I got a black one, but would have preferred blue.
I’m not inclined to buy another one personally, but that’s more because my workplace won’t allow people to wear t-shirts, so I’ve cut down on buying them in general. I sort of figure most people who wanted them in the first place have them, and there’s not enough of a variety of designs for one person to buy that many shirts.
As for the quality of Cafepress, I dunno, my USSM t-shirt survived many washings and several trips to other cities (and countries) just fine
But I have noticed a wide variety in how good CP shirts look in general, though I figured the printing quality was partially due to the source graphics provided.
Oh, and as for inside jokes on shirts… they’re funny, but they have a pretty short halflife. I made a Mariners blogosphere joke t-shirt in mid-2005, and pretty much everything on it is already out of date and most of the people reading it don’t get it. (“Huh? Spiroid? Player A? JoeJessica? The Laziest Man In Baseball?”)
And what #7 said too.
I purchased a “Felix is my King” shirt about a year or so ago. I too was disappointed with the quality of both the fabric and the print quality (which faded significantly after a couple washes). If there’s a different distribution scenario, I’d give it another shot. Regardless, I will continue to contribute directly via PayPal because USSM is worth it.
I dunno, the point of my previous post was: A website devoted to the analysis of the M’s organization is a pretty limited niche market.
I dunno, but you seriously have no idea what you’re talking about.
And I’m saving comments on quality/etc for late.r
….and that’s the other reason I wouldn’t buy a USSM shirt. You don’t think it’s a niche market fine, say so. The insult was uncalled for.
Derek,
Is your site traffic private information? if it isn’t, perhaps you can share your hits with us and show us that frenchonion is incorrect.
I’m curious as to how many registered users USSM has and also how active those users are.
any chance of that?
What happened to the “shirt of the month� I’m so sick of people asking me about the traffic in McCall…
Yeah. I thought about buying one of these. But, they were a limited time offer, and I missed out. Perhaps a few “limited time offer” series, and more pimp-age thereof? It would be a good way to incorporate some of the inside joke ideas, too (which would force people to be repeat customers as some of those slogans fade into halflife as Deanna mentioned). Sorta like planned obsolescence.
You could always create something like WOOT, and sell the occasional Random Bag-O’-Crap. It’d be a great way to clean out your personal clutter. I’m sure someone’d be thrilled to receive the old USSM server. Especially if it’s autographed by all the USSM authors.
I would be more inclined to buy a USSM baseball cap than a t-shirt, provided the cost was under $20 or so.
Especially if it’s autographed by all the USSM authors.
So, you want Derek to find the old server, sign it, UPS it to New York so Jason can sign it, have him FedEx it to me in North Carolina so I can sign it, and then I’ll drive it to Kentucky so Peter White can sign it before we take it to the post office and get it sent on a slow boat to Okinawa so Jeff can sign it, who will then mail it back to Derek so he can give it away?
That sounds cost effective. You should work for the government. Oh, wait…
I’m reminded of a joke I heard a while back:
(I believe it’s Homer launching a website, that soon becomes immensly popular. While checking his traffic he gets this message.)
“Your website has become the #32 non-porn site in terms of traffic, making it the #1,325,113th website on the net!”
You don’t think it’s a niche market fine, say so. The insult was uncalled for.
Where was the insult? I didn’t say “you’re an idiot” or “you’re stupid”. I said you have no idea what you’re talking about. And you don’t.
Is your site traffic private information? if it isn’t, perhaps you can share your hits with us and show us that frenchonion is incorrect.
I’m curious as to how many registered users USSM has and also how active those users are.
We have not yet disclosed traffic information, though we’ve given some vague numbers at times. There’s some information out there that’s available, like Alexa etc.
As to registered users, well… we’ve done some comment stuff, but that’s another thing I don’t really want to disclose.
I don’t think we’ve seen a reason to toot our own horn w/r/t stats.
Here’s an idea – instead of always selling swag (I love the site, but I’m not of the slogany t-shirt buying persuasion…), maybe sell yourselves.
Stop sniggering at the back. Not like that.
Maybe once a year, auction off a USS Mariner Go-To-A-Game Package, where the highest bidder (or two bidders, or whatever) get to spend an evening at Safeco with one, two, or however many USSM authors happen to be in town at the time. Or maybe Derek could auction off autographed copies of his book, available now for preorder through Amazon. Or something.
My point being, it may be more successful to do one or two “big bang” funding events per year than to hope for a constant trickle of dollars.
#24 That falls back into the “fullfillment” gig they don’t want a part of.
And yeah, I know I don’t have any idea as to what your traffic is, I even said so. I was giving my perception of what I *thought* it was. Just tell me I’m wrong, or that the figures are significantly different from my perceptions – not “I dunno, but you seriously have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“I dunno, but you seriously have no idea what you’re talking about.â€
Not to derail this discussion completely, nor to speak for the authors, but that phrase is not a value judgment, it’s a statement of fact (by your own admission – you have said that you don’t know their traffic level). Don’t read meanings into things that aren’t there.
I’ll pay US$1000 for the old server. But talk to me in a couple years.
Give out your merchandise (t-shirt, hat, etc) at your events, and add a surcharge to cover the costs plus a couple bucks for site maintenance. It will almost guarantee to keep away people just trying to get a good “all you can eat deal”. It’s a win-win-win type situation, except for those who can’t afford or don’t want your swag.
I would buy a “Doyle Rocks!” shirt! I think the designs are plain and would love to see some funny stuff like 88fingerslukee mentioned.
I would buy something that is not white or black. I would prefer something blue.
#26
I saw the comment as particularly snarky and rude, so I guess opinions are like…
Why so secretive about the traffic? Bizarre.
Maybe a shirt that says something like “Fire Hargrove” and put ussmariner.com under it. People would wear them to the games and around town, and because so many fans would feel sympathetic to the cause, loads of people would check out the site so they could buy their own. Site regulars and nonregulars alike would buy into it. It would be like those “Not My President” or “What Would Johnny Damon Do?” shirts.
How about some kind of shirt, that is like, white. It could be totally empty except for a 1 square pixel black dot. And then on the back, a screenshot of the website. That would be the shit.
I’m not a clothing designer. I hate Sea-tac, too.
Or you could take a giant screenshot of like a gamethread, and make that the whole shirt.
Or sell some kind of autographed baseball. That would be tight. Charge US$30 for it, call it charity, and call it a day. That would be sweet. I’d buy it.
find the old server, sign it, UPS it to New York so Jason can sign it, have him FedEx it to me in North Carolina so I can sign it, and then I’ll drive it to Kentucky so Peter White can sign it before we take it to the post office and get it sent on a slow boat to Okinawa so Jeff can sign it, who will then mail it back to Derek so he can give it away
I smell a reality series– funded by Chevy, Corco in one of those new Americagasm Trucks, heading out to get his server signed…
more haikus!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
We could charge Corco per comment.
actually i’d buy a tshirt made from a giant screenshot of the evaluating defense or evaluating pitching talent threads….
Yeah…I’m willing to take the Jeep and drive from Seattle->NY->NC->Okinawa-> Tacoma and pay the authors $50 per person. That would be really sweet.
I’m willing to pay US$.01/comment.
I’ve always liked the simple “Cult of Doyle” shirt idea.
… though Doyle has had some choice quotes through the years:
“I don’t like to look at myself in the mirror. God didn’t make me to look pretty. If He did, I would have been a supermodel and women would want me.â€
“My day usually consisted of hitting, lifting and running. Shedding those extra pounds of good old aussie beer in me.â€
“Some say I am too intense at the plate and maybe I am but my at-bats are mine and when I feel someone has taken one away from me I get offended.â€
Yeah…I’m willing to take the Jeep and drive from Seattle->NY->NC->Okinawa-> Tacoma and pay the authors $50 per person.
I’m willing to match that $50 to see Corco attempt to drive to Okinawa.
I kid Corco.
I’d put the car on a car ferry over the ocean, of course.
Damn it. I am so bored. Is there anything to do in Seatac?!?!?
“Some say I am too intense at the plate and maybe I am but my at-bats are mine and when I feel someone has taken one away from me I get offended.â€
Thats the type of guy you’d want in you foxhole….
I’m willing to pay US$.01/comment.
You owe us $46.
Can I just give you guys US$5 a month for the next 5 years and call it good? Because I’m totally willing to do that.
#45– want to take over worrying about the weather for me? I am getting very tired of holiday driving preceeded by forecasts like:
A COLD FRONT MOVING INTO WESTERN WASHINGTON ON THANKSGIVING DAY
COULD PRODUCE HEAVY SNOW IN THE CASCADES…WITH PERIODS OF HEAVY
SNOW CONTINUING THROUGH FRIDAY. THE SNOW LEVEL WILL BE WELL BELOW
HIGHWAY PASS LEVELS DURING THIS PERIOD. WINDY CONDITIONS WILL LIKELY ACCOMPANY THE SNOW AND MAKE CONDITIONS WORSE. PEOPLE PLANNING TO TRAVEL INTO OR ACROSS THE CASCADES THANKSGIVING DAY THROUGH FRIDAY SHOULD EXPECT DIFFICULT WINTER DRIVING CONDITIONS.
Well, there’s a disconnect between your revenue stream (shirts and mugs) and the oh-so-desirable commodity presented on this site (quality baseball analysis).
I bet if you took all of the analytical articles posted in a year and compiled them into a yearly book/magazine/whatever, it’d sell very well and could make some decent money.
No, because you’d never get out of debt.
There’s an interesting question. I’ve been contemplating trying something like this: offering a spring-training in-depth team preview, almost like a Street & Smith’s, and selling the download for $1 or something ridiculously cheap.
Or even using a print-on-demand publisher to do paper copies.
Debt? I don’t mean doing a full-fledged book publishing. I’m talking on the Kinkos-Five-cents-per-page level. A shiny cover isn’t the point; the content is.
#52– which would also give you the advantage of having accurate info, rather than the ‘written two months ahead before that big trade’ stuff S&S and Athlon publish
I like the idea in #24 and think it might even be good to do once a month.
I think that an occasional slogan thread (requested by posters with a vote) would help sales and I personally would be donating or buying items if I were in a better monitary situation. During the course of a season and even during the offseason there are phrases that would be cool to be able to wear. Whether it’s a request for a certain players acquisition or a request for Hargrove to play/not play a certain player a certain way. I’m sure there’s some Marketability for a “Bloomquist
offering a spring-training in-depth team preview, almost like a Street & Smith’s, and selling the download for $1
That would be a great idea. I’d even go as high as $2.50 for something like that. That, to me, is much more valuable than a t-shirt.
you mean kinda like BP?
Yes, except written by people who actually know and follow the Mariners, like BP used to be.
(OOOOOOOOOOOOOOHHH YES I SAID IT)
here you go, Corco
I lost most of my last comment because of syntax…I like alot of the slogan ideas on this thread. I saw one recently “Hargrove:Human Brain Delay”
I thought of the idea of doing the shirts as patches instead. They could be added to a plain baseball cap or a shirt or jacket. I would be the type of person to try and collect my favorites. There’d be no problem wearing the old/outdated ones for me because I’d put them all on one jacket, enabling me to display the new ones too.
I know a embroidering company out in Bellevue that did really good work on jackets, hats and shirts, but I don’t know if they do patches or what the cost would be per. It would probably be cheaper per and enable more different ones to be made eventually. I don’t remember the name of the company off hand, it was a couple years back that I had dealings with them. Heck, Edgar owns a local embroidering company doesn’t he?
First time poster here, I agree with pdb, even being a poor college student, I would probably pay a few bucks for something like that.
CORCO’S OKINAWA DRIVE (See # 41, # 44, & # 45) – Anyone: Didn’t some former MLB’er beat Corco to that hair-brained idea?
FERRY TO OKINAWA? (See # 45) – You mean they still have that ferry? No bridge yet?
Thinking of Edgar brings on a whole other idea that would be great to see
“Vote Edgar Martinez Hall of Fame 2009″
Now would be the time to push sales, it being near the holidays…that said, I’m not real thrilled with the logos. The battleship doesn’t really have any correlation to what goes on here, the traffic question is a little obscure.
I think they would benefit from a good slogan, though darned if I know what that is. But some sort of catch-phrase that captures the wry humor, baseball-fanaticism, and expertise that are the hallmarks of the site.
I agree with #32 and the idea for a “Fire Hargrove” t-shirt. I would probably purchase one of those shirts or the “Edgar Martinez for Hall of Fame 2009″ slogans.
Under the terms of service for Cafe Press, we’re not allowed to use people’s names. We managed to get around it before (talking about the DH instead of Everett, for instance) but yeah, that’s a particularly frustrating limitation.
I’m sure Derek knows more about the pluses and minuses of this than I do, but here’s an example of Jon Weisman of the Dodger Thoughts’ self-published book:
http://www.lulu.com/content/164688
I don’t know what type of work Edgars embroidery company does, but if it’s like the logo embroidery shops I’ve dealt with it could work. Maybe his company wouldn’t have a problem putting his name on a T-shirt? Especially if it promotes his HOF entry…
Caribbean Embroidery
That sounds cost effective. You should work for the government. Oh, wait…
Oooh – Ouch. Careful now, or I’ll send the Reverend your way
And, ya know, the government would probably contract out the shipping services to a company in India anyway – to ‘save money’
I like the idea of charging Corco on a per-comment basis. You guys would be instant ba-zillionaires!
On a more serious note — if t-shirts/mugs/etc. isn’t your schtick, I’d be more than happy to hand over the commercial rights to any of my Doyle pix, to help raise funds. I slapped together this picture, thinking it might be kinda fun to auction it off and send the proceeds your direction during the first server meltdown. I thought about even trying to have Doyle autograph it himself, but alas, that never panned out…
if they’d let you use profanity as well as names, I’d suggest a shirt with a tally of this off-season’s signings, because it is just getting sillier & sillier out there … they say (you know, they) that Lee is being offered 6/$80-90M by the O’s. Roch Kubatko say (with a straight face) “Though it would be a substantial commitment, it’s not in the same neighborhood as the eight-year, $136 million contract that Alfonso Soriano signed with the Chicago Cubs.”
To think outside the box a bit, I don’t see why the manner of paying for the site necessarily has to be related to it. If these ideas are not lucrative enough or if you don’t want to put ads on the site, why not spend the time you’re wasting on this stuff doing something that would actually make money (e.g., copywriting, being one of these Albino-looking idiots who dances in the Intel dual core commercials, selling your plasma) in that time period? (Hey, at least one of those was a serious idea.) The idea is that if you’re just concerned about things like buying a server, there are pretty easy ways to make a bit of coin. Many of them have the added virtue of being legal.
Just a thought. Counterarguments are, of course, available.
By the way, “this stuff” is intended to refer to efforts to sell things to make money, not to keep the site up. IMO, among many others, the time you guys add content to this site is not wasted.
I have a cafe press shop for a website I run, essentially just to see how well it works.
One problem with Cafe Press is that the products end up very expensive for hum-drum quality. My biggest seller is a calendar (oooo, 100 sold!) and they end up selling for $20, which is steep for a calendar.
I’m thinking of moving my shirts to Spreadshirt which offers far better quality shirts in much more diverse colors, styles, etc. They also do plot printing from vector art. It all sounds great, but the prices are the same or a bit more depending on the item. But for the quality alone, I’m thinking about it.
Dunno what the answer is. I have about 10,000 unique users a month, looking at an average of 30 pages apiece (for a half hour per visit). I have a modestly placed donations box, an “ad” to get people to visit my store, and a few Amazon affiliate books on offer. I make about $1000 a year from the cafe press junk, have receive about $25 a year in donations, and thus far in the month I’ve been trying it, about $5 a month via Amazon.
A friend who runs a similar site tried adsense and made about $3 a month.
There just isn’t a lot of money in these sort of things except for the companies that provide the services. The model I might consider would be the Something Awful/Metafilter model, which is a single one-time fee for the ability to comment. $5 in Metafilter’s case, $10 I think on SA.
I do think snazzier graphics on your shirts would sell better. Not easy to come by unless you are one/are dating one/have one in the family.
Somehow the word “designer” got left out of the last sentence, or at least should replace “one”.
I think it’s a price issue. During the holidays, T-Shirts on Threadless are $10 a pop. It’s hard coughing up $22+ for a t-shirt.
here’s pretty much a dumb idea but….
why not offer designs in a periodic rotation but instead of a continuous offering online like at cafee press, you list them on ebay…. or I have no idea what volume/fees you guys have to deal with, but you could run a modest USSM ebay store….
Make a shirt that says “Ask me what VORP means”
I’d buy one. It’d make me even more of a chick magnet.
78 – I joked last year that I was going to make a women’s t-shirt with the equation for VORP and the slogan “Shopping is hard. Let’s go estimating the effect a batter’s offensive performance has on his team’s number of runs scored.”
But then I realized that the number of women who’d actually buy it was fairly low, and the number of people who’d get it might be even lower.
I would recommend Spreadshirt
They have lots of materials and different colors of shirts. Or you can go the cheap route and buy the iron-ons and do it DIY like hardcore punk. I ganked this Mike D ILL t-shirt logo from here time to get ill two years ago and after many washings the transfer has shown no signs of wear and tear, in fact it blends it perfectly with the shirt as a much worn shirt would do. I used Hanes Tees purcahsed on the cheap from Garden Ridge. Just my humble suggestions.
79
You’d be a smash hit at Single’s Night though!
I like the team preview idea. I’d rather pay for content than for an overpriced t-shirt. It’s funny, because we all talk about sending money to USSM, but given the means to contribute directly (the PayPal button), we fail to do so. Instead of saying, “Hey, I’d pay 5 bucks a month,” just go ahead and do it. Nobody’s stopping you. (or me, for that matter…)
Now, as for content, I think that that is something many of us would pay for. $5 for a team preview here, $2.50 for a stats review there, etc. How is that different from the PayPal button? Well, it’s hard to up and pay out of the blue – “hey, I’ve got 5 bucks today, so I’ll send it to Dave, Derek, and Jason.” But, given a specific “item” that prompts me for payment, then I’d bite. With our appetite for USSM content, a season preview or whatever could go like hotcakes.
Regarding the CafePress items, I’m not impressed by the quality or the price. And I’m not all that interested in t-shirts, anyway.
82 – some of us do . . . and more of us should.
I don’t like Cafe Press for two reasons. The first being the price/quality issues already raised and the second being that I got e-mails from them for several months promoting all sorts of things that had nothing to do with USSM.
David
My suggestion is a PBS-like USS Mariner fund raising drive in the spring. Ask your loyal readers to pony up to raise the operating budget for the coming year. Have a specific target in mind, and ask us to hit that target. If you wanted, you could send a copy of your book or other similar reward to those who donate at a certain level. Try to get the fund raising out of the way one time so you don’t have to worry about it during the season.
I don’t think Corco’s $0.01 / comment model is far off the mark.
I like Roger’s suggestion
and maybe you guys find it more palatable?
Say 50% of people who’ve posted more than once during 2006 will pay you $10. Is that an interesting amount?
Disclaimer – Yes, I work for a large subscription-based site.
WHO? – Darn it. Who was the MLB player–a while ago–that talked about driving to some place that you real
ly couldn’t get to by car? (San Juan, perhaps ?)
[Someone foolish enough to try it.]
I have to say I like that there is a USSM store (I’m still rocking my Doyle Softball T-shirt). However I agree with the quality complaints and the fact that you’re paying a fee to them outside of what they’re already making off you is insane. Scale the store back to the “free level” and rotate the items or switch to a different service but keep it an option. I’ve bought 2 shirts, I’ll buy your book, just please don’t charge for content.