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Tiffy on the Vine.

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I went a little over budget in March, but was under for 2025 rollover, Jan, and Feb, and so far April is shaping up to be under, too.

I guess all of the $0 ETV stuff is showing up in RFY, now.

Someone got a slushie maker today and I really want one, but it WOULD be a pain to have to move it come June. Maybe one will pop up after the move.

I bet my gaggle of nieces and nephews would love one.

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Oops I hit my tax budget for the month already... I budgeted myself $100 in owed taxes due to Vine per month so it's easy to pay when the time rolls around.

I usually don't get even close to it, but there have been some nice things the past few days.

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There's a small furniture piece on Vine that I could get and I kind of want it but I don't need it or really have anywhere to put it.

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I am very curious about the algorithm that decides who to recommend specific products to...

None of this is relevant to anything I've searched or bought in or out of Vine.

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This much more stuff has happened since that last spreadsheet post.

I did go and color code some things. Because I can.

I also set up a template tab for the colors and categories and started one for next year.

Amazon added some features to Vine recently like a quality rating for your reviews that will affect your account rating eventually and I'm resisting adding that to my spreadsheet. I don't NEED to, but we all know me with compiling and sorting data.

I did cross $2k, of course, and there's still time to add quite a bit more to my total before the end of the year. I will try to not.

I've been thinking about how every time I start doing something it goes to shit.

Vine, for instance, everyone is saying there's not nearly as much stuff and way more participants so now it's a mad scramble to get anything at all. They keep adding metrics to your account rating, presumably to filter out lower-performing participants (it won't negatively affect me, likely, but it might if they set one like "X number of poor reviews EVER and you get the boot"), and a lot of things that had been $0 ETV, so truly free, no longer are.

In addition to that, the IRS deciding Vine items are now considered taxable income is relatively recent. If I'd been invited a decade ago I'd have gotten SO much stuff over the years and not had to worry about pushing myself into another tax bracket and deleting all of my piddly gas station income by owing it in taxes on product that was never money to begin with and couldn't be used to pay the bills. Now, I have to be more careful and because of that I do miss out on a lot of stuff. Which. Is actually ok. I have a ton of stuff already.

There are other things, of course, like how as soon as I decided I was ready to try to strike out on my own and escape a bad relationship and home situation the cost of apartments skyrocketed and so did the cost of used cars way outside my ability to earn in addition to the AI reading resumes issue that filters out a lot of good candidates for jobs in error.

It just stinks.

I'm still having fun with Vine, still MOSTLY not requesting random junk, and well on track to make it to "gold". I'll have to be even more careful then, though, because having 8 picks a day instead of 3 and with values over $99 possible, it would be very, very easy to screw myself income-tax-wise.

Being in Vine has let me experience things I otherwise wouldn't have been able to.

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A lot of people complain about their RFY being nonsense....

...

Yeah.

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Am I having too much fun with this? Yes.

I will likely go and color-code the emoji column, too. Because I can.

This is everything I've ordered via Vine so far.

I see people complaining about, like "I ordered and reviewed 400 pieces of JUNK to get to GOLD and gold isn't as magical as I expected!" and it's like, you literally don't need to do that. You need to order and review 80 items over a 6-month period, and they don't have to be the random junk.

I, or someone in my house, are actively using all of the thumbs ups and most of the neutrals.

I also saw someone say they've been in Vine about as long as I have and have wracked up $12k in ETV which is........ Something. That much would push me into another tax bracket. They had to have requested so much stuff...

It's cut off in the pictures but I've not gone above $2k ETV, yet.

It's weird to me how some people approach the program.

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Sometimes the Vine picks are fun things like a strawberry lunch box that's too big to use, toys/games, or a whole-ass coffee maker.

Sometimes it's mundane things like Bandage, incense, and a toilet brush for work because the old lady that used to come in and clean the bathrooms once a week doesn't seem to be coming in anymore so the bathroom is kind of scary right now. If there's a brush in there, I can at least give it a quick swish as needed.

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One thing I've noticed on the Vine Reddit is that people who have been in the program for a long time will come in and complain about how it's not as good as it used to be, and then newer members will complain about them being entitled or what-have-you.

I was thinking about that on my way home and it's kind of like people having long-covid.

Able-bodied people were killing themselves after getting long-covid because they couldn't take having lost their mobility, energy, focus, etc. and I was musing about that years back because they ended their own lives for becoming like me while here I am plodding along in a condition these other people found unlivable. I've never had better so didn't lose anything.

It's harder to live with losing something than to live with never having had it in the first place, so I can see why these veteran Vine members would be upset at losing something they once had.

Even though I'm coming in on what a lot of people are calling the death of the program (which is very typical for me, honestly...), I'd be upset to lose access to it now that I've had it, too, even if it never improved again.

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I'm enjoying being in the Amazon Vine reddit, but the community tends to be very negative. I guess in general people tend to not say anything at all unless it's a complaint.

Either way, I posted about my nice Vine-centric shower and of course people are being negative. One comment that's actually kind of neutral was "What about taxes, though?"

So I calculated up the items I'd put in the reddit post, which is fewer than what's in the tumblr post, and the total cost to me when tax time rolls around will be $11.88.

What about it, then? 😂

All together, fed and state combined, I'll owe $239.40 so far. Considering all the crap I've gotten, that's well worth it.

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I didn't realize the only post left here was meant for the whining blog.

Oh well.

Obviously I wiped the whole thing out again. I got kicked out of Amazon Associates for using screenshots of their sales pages and "Amazon trademarked names" like "Amazon Vine".

I'd always used screenshots so I don't know why they didn't like that now, after years of being in good standing until I decided to leave and then rejoined after getting my Vine invite.

Either way, I rejoined again kind of out of spite... I mean, I did leave on my own because it wasn't fun anymore and Tumblr is impossible to sell to on purpose.

Amazon also sucks, as a corporate entity.

Either way, I'm trying again just to see if I can appease them or something, and starting with a disappointing item I got in the other day.