The Cheese #77 🧀 - Back From Disney, a Whop Flop, and Herpangina

Back in the Saddle

Back from a week at Disney World and right into the deep end. The schedule this week is packed, and to really kick things off, both Johnny and Colleen came home sick. Evidently, we picked something up on the trip. Johnny's fever started Monday. The fever seems to have passed for the moment, but he has a bunch of big ulcers in his mouth that are very painful for him. His pediatrician thinks it is likely herpangina. Not a fun way to come off vacation.

Whatnot has been a grind the last few days. The KPIs have not been great, a combination of some challenging shows, a few of our own best practices slipping, and a less-than-optimal audience. Whatnot is cyclical like that. We get ebbs and flows throughout the month, and how the team responds usually dictates how long those hills and valleys last. Right now the forecast tool has us finishing at $384k. That is well over our previous record of $356k from May, just far from the $500k we were dreaming on. We are sitting at $280k for the month so far.

Cameron called an audible and added a second warehouse show this month, running next Thursday. That one should deliver at least $30k on its own, so the odds of us NOT setting a new monthly record are basically zero. We are setting a record this month. The only question is how big.

We also officially wrapped our second Whop clipping campaign, and it did not go well. This was our first crack at clipping our viral product testing videos, which in theory should lead straight to sales. Instead, the campaign got overrun by scammers and fake bot traffic galore. I am still bullish on clipping as a whole, but we are second-guessing whether Whop is the right home for our campaigns going forward.

On the AI front, Chuck and I spent time earlier in the week on his Claude Cowork sales automation. He made some tweaks to the messaging, and he is now getting responses overnight, so clearly it was a move in the right direction.

Amazon is on track to continue its streak of $100k months, up 18% year over year. Membership is doing OK. We are finally stringing together some acceptable days, though I would love to get back into scale mode. On the ops side, we are mid-switch from Shipstation to Redo. The Redo team even sent someone down to the warehouse this week to connect all our printers and computers and train the team a bit. The ops crew seems genuinely excited about the change.

BattlGames is heating up. We close sponsorships next week, and we have three more we expect to ring in before Friday, all verbal commitments right now. Shay, Seele, and I also started going through the Season 3 submissions. So many great ones, and it is a shame we can only pick 10. We built out a grading and rating system to keep the selections impartial and fair, with the goal of having our 10 contestants locked by the end of next week.

One more operations note. Walter is officially pulling the plug on Visually for our A/B testing. We left Intelligems a couple of months ago, lured away by a solution that unfortunately does not do what it promised and white-glove service that was nowhere near our expectations. We are likely headed right back to Intelligems. Lesson learned lol.

Last thing, and this one I am genuinely excited about. On the Disney trip, I did something I have never done before. Every single day, I documented where we went and what we did in my Notes app, using Wispr Flow to transcribe my voice as I went (shout out to Wispr Flow, who happens to be this week's sponsor; go click their ad, that is how I keep this newsletter from losing money since I am not selling you anything lol). Then I dumped all those notes into an agent I built that is trained on my voice and how I write. The result was 13 separate articles about the trip, all live on the site now. Huge shout-out to Lhea for compiling them and adding the graphics. This checks so many boxes for me. Great tips and knowledge on the SEO and AEO front, a well-documented record of everything we did, and a quick URL I can hand to friends when they ask what we did and where we went. There is no shot we would remember it all otherwise. I dropped one of the articles at the bottom, plus a link to all 13.

Let's get into the rest!

Building FIFA's Global Powerhouse: How Gianni Infantino Reshaped the World Cup Into a Billion-Dollar Sports Business

Lhea's latest. How Gianni Infantino turned the World Cup into a billion-dollar sports machine, expanding the tournament and chasing new revenue at every turn while the purists screamed. Good operator read.

StubHub CEO and Mass Scalping: What SEC Filings Reveal About Eric Baker and Andro Capital

Wrote this one up after reading through some SEC filings. StubHub CEO Eric Baker, a fund called Andro Capital, and what the paperwork actually says about mass scalping. If you have ever paid triple face value for a ticket, this one helps explain why.

The AI Jobs Wipeout That Wasn't: Why Big Tech Flipped the Story

My take on the great AI jobs apocalypse that big tech spent a year hyping and then quietly walked back. The narrative flipped fast once it stopped being convenient. Worth a read if you are trying to separate the signal from the fear.

I Got Triggered Shopping for a Shirt and Played Detective

Not sure why this one set me off, but it did, so I went full detective on it. A simple shirt shopping trip turned into an investigation. Enjoy.

Disney World With a Toddler

Here is one of the 13 Disney articles I mentioned up top. This one is on doing Disney with a toddler, which is its own special kind of adventure. If you want the full set, all 13 are right here: https://onlinequeso.com/search?page=1&q=disney&type=article

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That’s a Wrap on This Week’s Cheesy Scoop! 🧀

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Until next time, stay melty, stay merry, and keep it extra cheesy!

With warm queso vibes,
Team Online Queso