The New Adventures Of The Old Kimchi Hunter

The wild, bloated kimchi casually sauntered through the driveway. They had no choice but to stab it mercilessly…

Hey, do y’all remember in the Before Times when I was keeping you informed of my scheme to profit handsomely as an internet kimchi ambassador/ salesman/ cartel leader? Aka, The Prissy Pet Project–you recall those dry-ass shenanigans, right?

If you don’t, you can relive all the glory and get caught up to speed here.

So my last official update was waaaay back on February 6th–almost 7 months ago! It feels like we’re probably due for another one…

The latter half of this blog post is dedicated to an abridged version of my project journal, for those who might somehow be stricken with urge to drudge through those details.

For the sake of the narrative, let me give everybody else as brief as a summary of which I am capable.

My business model is 2-fold. First, using automated posting software, I build a following on my obviously-named Tumblr blog, kimchi-and-keto. This is my entire marketing strategy.

Second, I use my Tumblr posts to link to kimchiandketo.com, my website that, in theory, will be a curated kimchi store featuring homemade review videos and extended diet/lifestyle information (keto, vegan, kosher, etc.). The store actually links to products on Amazon, and for every time someone goes through my website to buy some kimchi, I’ll earn a commission of around 5%. Further I will earn commission on anything that person buys on Amazon for the next 30 days.

Now, what has happened since February? Well, I had started to build a basic version of kimchiandketo.com, but hadn’t figured out how to easily (and properly) link to the products on Amazon.

Right when I was on the verge of solving that technical issue…COVID took over the world. ----- COVID. At that point I started directing my energy on more important concerns. You know, like surviving the collapse of society. Or how to actually be productive when I suddenly found myself an overly-chatty office mate (aka the Boss Lady).

Around July, I was finally re-energized enough to pick it back up again, even getting the website into a basic, but functional, state. I even made my first sale! Even if it was to an acquaintance, it still counts.

And that is when I discovered that back in April, Amazon decided to really stick it to the Amazon Associates, the entrepreneurs like me that would drive business to Amazon and receive a commission in return. You can think of Associates as the little guys & gals that had helped build their empire.

And they/we got screwed over real good by Amazon when they slashed the commission rates to insultingly-low levels. Remember how I just said my business model included a 5% commission? Well, for my category of products, Groceries, that got cut to 1%. One gosh darn percent!

For my first sale, the product price was $20 before shipping. Now, instead of earning $1 off that sale, it was a paltry 20 cents! On top of that, they cut the window for earning extra commissions from 30 days to 24 hours.

In short, they blew up my whole business model.

Now I have a couple of thoughts in light of this unpleasant development…but I’ll save those for next week.

For now, I will reward your loyalty with these videos of the Boss Lady’s parents spear-fishing some wild kimchi that wandered into their driveway.

[expand title=”Click here for the actual context of this video.”]Ok, for realz, what happened was her dad ordered a big ol’ bag of kimchi a week before we all went on vacation, but the shipping was slow af. He recruited his neighbor to pick it up when it was delivered and keep it refrigerated until we returned. No problem, right?

Well, the post office decided to hold it instead…for lord knows what reason. Anyways, letting a bag of fermenting cabbage sit in the heat for ~11 days can end in disaster if you’re not careful…hence trying to stab it with an 8-foot pole.

Oh, shenanigans.[/expand]

Optional Reading

[expand title=”Click here for The Official Prissy Pet Project Journal: The Missing Pages.”]

Journal Date: 7 February 2020 (Friday):
Signed up as Amazon Associate, you need to have a pre-existing website for them to check out, so I put thepointofthestory.com on the application. Key detail: I have 180 days to get 3 sales, or else they shut my account down and I would need to set up a new one.

Journal Date: 10 February 2020 (Monday):
Took the plunge and bought & installed the REHub theme¹https://themeforest.net/ for WordPress for $61.

Journal Date: 19 February 2020 (Wednesday):
Tried to “easily” set up a store linking to products on Amazon. This was a huge fail, Amazon and/or REHub had changed some policies back in October 2019, making it much more difficult to get access to the key features that made things easy. Key detail: Either I drop $50 for the Pro version of something-in-rather²Content Egg plugin, if you care about that detail. or figure out how to get 3 sales (see Figure 1) the hard way so I can have access to the API.³Code that does the hard work of interfacing with Amazon. Even in the case of the latter, I will have to hope my programming skills are sufficient to pick up the slack.

Journal Date: 24 February 2020 (Monday):
Was teased with a solution in the form of Content Egg’s “Offer Module”. However, wasn’t able to get it to work before giving up for the day.

Journal Date: 2 March 2020 (Monday):
I found out that the website that “Franklin” had set up in the guide I’ve been following was defunct…Womp womp womp! That is not reassuring, LOL. BUT, I finally figured out how to manually add product (see Figure 2), so I searched for “vegan kimchi” on Amazon and added ol’ Madge’s Vegan Kimchi as my test product. Key detail: I think I can build my store the slow way, but it should allow me to earn those elusive first 3 qualifying sales.

Journal Date: 11 March 2020 (Wednesday):
Welp, it’s official: COVID-19 is about to clean America’s clock.

Journal Date: 15 March 2020 (Sunday):
Here comes COVID quarantine…not so sure that this might be the beginning of the end of functioning society. Key detail: Going to put this project indefinitely on hold and focus on more pressing matters, such as putting a bug-out plan together and learning how to actually start a campfire.

Journal Date: 11 July 2020 (Saturday):
Finally found the motivation to get back to this project. Great news is that my Tumblr following has grown to over 1,100 in the meantime! That might be enough to actually start driving business to my website.

I have about a month to get those first 3 sales! First step is getting a basic website in place that acquaintances can access and formally place a kimchi order that I will get credit for. Then I can think about spiffing up the website and opening it to the public (via my Tumblr followers).

Key detail: I have a live, bare-bones website up with 5 or 6 products that people can order from, and now I need to call in some favors from 3 friends to get my qualifying orders in before August 7th.

Journal Date: 16 July 2020 (Thursday):
Got my first sale from an accomplice who is already kimchi connoisseur! They paid $30 total–$20 for the kimchi and $10 for shipping. So will only earn commission on the $20. Key detail: now to call in those other 2 favors!

Journal Date: 18 July 2020 (Saturday):
While waiting for my first sale to shop in my Amazon Associate account, I decided to refresh my memory as to how much I could expect to make from this historic first sale. I found the following table of current commision rates (see Figure 3):⁴https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/help/node/topic/GRXPHT8U84RAYDXZ

And now, to convey the raw emotion of the moment, I will let my raw & unedited notes describe what happened next:

“FUUUUUUUCK.⁵Sorry about the potty words, Mom. It used to be 5%!

Apparently around mid-April Amazon decided to really ----- their associates over.⁶https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/14/amazon-slashes-commission-rates-for-affiliate-program.html

Also saw elsewhere that what used to be a 60-day cookie was switched to a 30-day cookie and is now a meager 24-hour cookie. Meaning I would only get commission on sales within 24 hours of them following my link.

In other words, my whole business model just got driven over the side of a cliff.

Well, this is ----- depressing. Will need to look into other associate options, but right now it’s hard to see a profitable path forward…”

Key detail: Welp, I’m glad I hadn’t built an entire empire already, only to have it de-valued by 80% overnight. Suppose I dodged a bullet on this one….

Journal Date: 28 August 2020 (Friday):
My Tumblr follower count is officially at 1,495–not, too bad! Also, I recycled all my Tumblr posts back into Queue+; currently sitting at 10,500 posts and posting every half hour, I should be golden until mid-March 2021. Key detail: Let’s be optimistic: I might be able to salvage this project yet…

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Content created on: 28 August 2020 (Friday)

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