I started working on this little project two months ago as a way to come up with some way to make at least one of my projects profitable. (The card shop is simply breaking even.) I was looking up the best ways to do this and so many suggestions resulted in things like "Become an influencer!", "Create a Substack!", "Sell Courses on a topic!", the usual content slop.
Look, I don't have the time or the interest to devote 90 hours of my day to one specific niche thing. When you become known as the "girl that makes coffee on youtube" in order to keep it going you have to make your entire life the "girl who makes coffee on youtube". My personal hobbies and interests change with the wind. Two weeks ago I was really into FPV drones, I knew that was fleeting and ignored it. Saved us a ton of money.
Anyway.
Ramen Noodles. Right. So, if I were following along with what the internet tells me to do I would have started up a ramen review blog/youtube/instagram and made a video per day reviewing a new instant ramen until my kidneys turned to stone. I am not a chef. I am not a food influencer. I only like maybe three flavors of ramen personally.
BUT!
Everyone else does have a favorite flavor. When you go to any site to buy something you check the reviews first to see if it's actually good or if they paid for the responses. Then I remembered Letterboxd, a site where people can come and review movies and TV shows in an environment disconnected from purchasing them. I wanted to make a "Letterboxd for Ramen". It's small, low stakes, limited options, and really just a test to see if I could make it work.
It's just for fun. But with affiliate links, because the hosting and db cost money. I drew a little logo for it. The guys were watching anime in the living room and I saw a Kitsune mask during one of those filler episodes where the characters go to a festival and thought that would be fun. I also made the flavor profile icons for the beef/chicken/seafood etc.
The noodle fox's name is Yuki.
Right now I just have ramen you can easily get on Amazon because thats the affiliate link account I have already and that's where the images are from. I will add more as the days go on and edit the current ones to be more descriptive etc. There are filters for flavor profiles and ingredients so you can filter for the handful of vegan or gluten free options.
The whole site is still in beta mode so a lot of things are still busted from a few last minute component changes. I'm working on fixing the sort by heat/rating.
Now, there is a mild social aspect to the site. When you make an account you get a publicly facing profile that people can see if they click on a review you post on a particular ramen. You can follow these people and a mini feed will appear in your own profile page when logged in. They can't see that you followed them. You can't see who follows you. With that information, it's best not to use actual photos of yourself or a username you use everywhere else if you want to be anon. I will not be adding comments or a way to contact other users. The following aspect is simply to see what your friends think of stuff. If you don't want to follow them you can bookmark their profile page.
And one more thing on moderation aspects. Your reviews go to a holding container for me to approve before they go live. I'll probably go through and approve them once per day. If you try to use the platform to spam links or advertise something I'll delete it and exile your account.
So check out the beta here, you can create an account and add reviews. Use the contact email in the footer to let us know of any major issues you run into.