Status Quo

It’s Sunday - but there’s no new update this week and instead I’d like to talk about the current state of the bot and its future.

The good news

I’ve initially created this bot to get a new GPU for myself. I didn’t think of getting thousands of people to follow it on Twitter, additional products or affiliate marketing at all. Let me be honest here: I had the idea after a few drinks with a friend (when there was no lockdown around). It’s a weird “in vino veritas” story to tell, but well, here we are.

Nevertheless, I was lucky to grab actually two new GPUs this week. An ASUS TUF and a Zotac Trinity.

The fact that I got two was more of an accident because I ordered on two different shops without even believing that I’d receive even one card. To my own surprise I had two GPUs at home at the end of the week - but I sold the Zotac today for the price I paid for it.

Fun fact: I didn’t even buy the Zotac via the bot and instead stumbled upon it in a shop I’m not even tracking while searching for something completely different.

With that, the bot has fulfilled its initial job. But do I shut it down now? Not yet. Let me explain.

Affiliate marketing

With the bot getting thousands of followers within the first night I thought of something fun: I could add affiliate links and maybe the bot would help me in funding my new GPU. Additionally, its costs (infrastructure, third party services, …) maybe could be covered too. The best about this: the price isn’t affected in any way. Kinda a win-win situation.

I started to add affiliate links for most shops that offered an affiliate program and hoped for the best. A little surprised, yet very happy about it: it worked out!

The money I made from affiliate marketing is enough to pay for my GPU and cover all the cost the bot causes. But since affiliate marketing wasn’t even part of the initial plan I wouldn’t be upset about this not going so well. If I was able to make some money with it I’m happy about it. If that doesn’t happen I’m still happy about all the Spritzers you guys paid me - and I’d still have a new GPU. Again, it’s win-win.

The only bad thing related to affiliate marketing was Amazon terminating my account for some serious bullshit reasons. Long story short: because someone I don’t even know shared my affiliate links on some internet forums Amazon has decided to terminate my account because they get traffic from a site which I don’t own. Ridiculous if you think about it: how am I supposed to prevent people from sharing links? Another fun fact: if Amazon terminates your account they do not pay out any outstanding commissions. We’re talking about 300 bucks here, nothing crazy - but the reason behind it is just utter bullshit.

Other than that I’d like to thank everyone again at this point for indirectly helping me in getting a new GPU. I tried my best to help others in getting a new GPU (or even a PS5) - and those people helped me in getting a new GPU. Thanks.

The future

Even if @ilovertx3000 has lost a bit of its momentum, the PS5 account is still going crazy and has already more than 6000 followers which shows that you folks are still very interested in this project.

Getting a PS5 would be really nice - but I’m in no hurry here. The big exclusive titles I like to buy consoles for are still not there for me, so I don’t mind if I have to wait some more months. But with so many people following the PS5 bot it’d be a shame to take the bot offline at this point.

I’ll leave all bots (RTX3000, PS5 and Ryzen 5000) up and running until at least christmas. If anything changes on this plan I’ll let you know.

It’s unlikely that more shops are being added at this point, but I’ll of course continue to fix bugs and watch if everything works properly.

If you’d like to get a reason for me retreating from the “stock availability tracking bot” business: developing and maintaining this bot has consumed an insane amount of time. Every additional product, every additional shop would require more work, more resources and more time. And even if I had a lot of fun with all of this (and even was able to fund my new GPU with it): sometimes you have to quit while you’re ahead. There are many other projects I’d like to work on and since the bot has fulfilled not just its initial purpose but also helped many others in getting new hardware it is time to move on.

If you’re interested in my future projects feel free to follow me on Twitter.

Good luck in getting whatever you seek, stay healthy and cheers!

— Kevin

Please use the Tweet about this post for comments!