Editor’s Note: This is a continuation of my pursuit of passive income via slanging kimchi on Tumblr. Now that I think about it, I guess I’m sort of an aspiring internet drug dealer–but the GOOD kind of drug dealer, like, say, an anesthesiologist. You can read about my descent into the light underbelly of the internet in Epitaph, The Prissy Pet Project, and Cuckoo for Kimchi Puffs, if need be. Or if you have insomnia and need to get some sleep…
As always, it’s good to at least lightly refresh my Dear Readers as to what this particular not-exactly-shooting-for-the-stars pursuit is about.
One of the Four Pillars of Pointellism1I’m appropriating this term from the art community for my own purposes. Get over it. is to provide resources for people who are interested in non-traditional money-producing ventures, but don’t necessarily want to risk wasting their time and/or reputation in the process.
That’s where I swoop in, to investigate less-than-sure-bets and then expound upon my misadventures at medium length. Then the readers can decide whether or not such schemes are a good fit for them. With any luck, I’ll make some money along the way myself. Or at least gain Life Experience Points…
Currently I have been following a random online guide to making money via Tumblr.2Tumblr, a rather popular micro-blogging site.
As a reminder here is the basic checklist of such schemes:3All screen shots should be assumed to be from https://www.onlinedimes.com/how-make-money-on-tumblr/
The short version of this strategy is this:
- Find some niche you like, and start a Tumblr blog related to that topic.
- Using some automated tools to post ad infinitum, build up a critical amount of Tumblr followers (50+). Don’t bother with original content–just repost from other like-minded blogs.
- Set up a basic Amazon store selling products related to your blog’s theme/brand.
- Use your automated posting tools to advertise your store on all your posts as they spread through Tumblr like a virus.
- Profit.4To be clear, the profit is via a small commission of 2-7% for everything you sell via Amazon–it’s not actually your products in the store.
- Repeat Step 5 without lifting a finger.
Last I left you, I had been in the process of trying to settle on a brand, and I had just abandoned the idea of a luxury pet brand, The Prissy Pet Project, in favor of an untitled kimchi/keto wellness brand.
This brings us to…
Journal Date: 29 November 2019 (Friday)…
You may be relieved and/or disappointed that I decided against incorporating Dear Leader Kim Jong Il into my brand image.
Nuclear War, Averted! (With North Korea, at least…)
The sad fact is, I’ve taken pretty much the most boring, uncreative route possible and gone with a rather utilitarian name, kimchiandketo. Sometimes things are best left un-overcomplicated…unlike this sentence. Anyways, it was available both on Tumblr and as a regular internet address, so I felt pretty good about the ability to at least have a consistent brand.
Within minutes of each other, I had staked my claim to both kimchiandketo.tumblr.com and www.kimchiandketo.com. Nice.
The former was free and the latter cost me about ~$20 for a year. However, I should note that was cheaper than usual because I could just piggyback off of this site, and not have to pay for website hosting.
Speaking of “$20,” I think this is a good time to broach the topic of exactly how profitable do I expect this to be? I guarantee you my Board of Director is going to be asking me that question.
Well, I finally got around to watching the video that Franklin, our esteemed guide, had included on the webpage that I’ve been referencing, and fortunately I was paying attention. He happened to mention almost in passing that he had made “like $20 in just 24 hours” shortly after his store was live online.
Now, this was a bit lower than I had anticipated, but there are 2 things that should be pointed out in regards to this: 1) if that actually holds steady, that’s roughly $600/month, which is not too bad given how little work I would be putting in on an ongiong basis, and 2) it seemed like he cited that figure only 2 days into trying to monetize his Tumblr following, so he might have actually hit a much higher steady-state amount.
If you’re wondering, it looks like his store specializes in selling tie-dye shirts with low-level humorous phrases on them to recreational drug users. Which, honestly, sounds like an easy sale, so I’m not exactly expecting to be making $600/month any time soon.
Also, some very relevant information I came across in one of the links5https://codecanyon.net/item/woozone-amazon-associates-bundle-pack/11240475 found in Franklin’s guide is Amazon’s commission rate for various products:
I really wish I would have done this research before even thinking about what I would want to sell in my store. Here’s why:
Assuming Dead-Head t-shirts fall under “Amazon Fashions (Men),” then Frankie-boy would be making a sweet 10% commission on his sales. As for my decision to go from luxury pet supplies to kimchi, it looks like my commission rate will go from 8% down to 5%. Dammit.
Oh well, I guess that’s the price you pay for trying to improve the gut health of all wealthy-ish mankind, right?
Anyways, I was going to get my online version of Kim’s Convenience setup while I had the momentum of ambition on my side…until I found out that both of the WordPress themes (super-helpful pre-made website templates) that Franklin was recommending were about $70 each. That’s a big enough of an investment that I decided to hold off on dropping 700 dimes on it until I knew I had the Tumblr audience to send over there. Also keep in mind that a key principle in my quest is to minimize bandwidth-draining decisions, making it not worth my time to find a free or at least cheaper alternative. So setting up the Amazon store is temporarily on hold for now.
But in the meantime I can get my Tumblr presence up and running. Yee-haw! Let’s get this rodeo on!
The auto-posting software that was used in the guide is called Queue+, and the free version allows one to add, en masse, 600 posts from other Tumblr blogs to be queued up and be automatically reposted by your account on a regular interval.
If this project proves to be something continuing for the longer term, I’ll probably drop the $20/year to be able to set up an unlimited number of posts across multiple Tumblr blogs. In that case I probably could spend 1-2 hours one afternoon to set up a year’s worth (or more) of blog posts, and not invest one red-blooded cent of my time on the project for another 365 (or more) days. That’s pushing 98%+ passivity!
During this proof-of-concept period, though, I’m stuck with queuing up 600 at a time. Given that I’ve set it to post every 10 minutes, that means it can run on auto-pilot for 4 days, 4 hours before needing to reload (though I would later change this to every 15 minutes, giving me 6 days, 6 hours of a break).
I found a handful of relevant and interesting blogs to populate my queue by searching such terms as “keto recipes” and “kimchi recipes.” I got up to 526/600 spots filled, so that it’s more than enough to get me up and running!
And though I haven’t got the store up and running yet, I decided to drop a link to it in all my posts (as prescribed by The Almighty Franklin):
Not exactly the proudest of my little tagline there, but I can always work on that later.
Welp, that seems like a hard day’s work, done and DONE!
*dusts off hands*
My Creation will take over Tumblr in no time! Nothing could possible go wrong in any asinine and boring way.
…or could it?
To Be Continued in Sunday’s post…
Content created on: 15/16 January 2020 (Wed/Thurs), and as noted.
Footnotes & References:
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