Good morning John.
About a year ago I had an idea; and I want to walk you through a little bit of the process of where this idea came from.
I´m obviously in the business of e-commerce, and so I spent a lot of time like looking at the landscape and thinking about it, and it´s boring.
It´s not boring actually.
So it turns out that there´s a lot of products that people are just going to need in their lives and manufacturing high quality products is getting easier. And so you have a lot of companies that have very, like, functionally similar products that are differentiating themselves on their story. 
But oftentimes, and I'm not trying to make any enemies here, these stories are pretty thin facades over what are very similar, or sometimes actually, literally, identical products. And so, everybody in this business is talking about how the only important thing is your story, and so I'm thinking; like, what's the best story? Everybody's trying to figure out what the best story is, but there's one thing that they won't really compromise on, which is that ultimately, the company needs to make money. And I'm like, does it? 
Because if you're gonna have a company that sells stuff people need, and it's fairly easy to make the stuff, then why not just have a company that does that, but then gives all the money away. 
This isn't a new idea; back in the 80's, Paul Newman, American amazingly attractive man, and also very talented, sweet guy; he, like, made salad dressings for fun, and then he was like, well I don't wanna make money, but I do wanna make salad dressing, and so he created Newman's Own, with some friends of course... and now there's this like, fairly major food brand that gives all of its profit to charity, and it's been around for like 40 years now. They've given away half a billion dollars, I'm like, super obsessed with their story. 
There's actually a bunch of ways that giving all your profit away that makes your company harder to run, I think maybe obviously, but maybe some not so obvious reasons as well. But there are also ways that it makes it easier. And I think if everything is gonna be about story, then let's make the story actually good! 
So this week, John and I are launching the Awesome Socks Club. It's a sock subscription. Every month of 2021, you're gonna get a different pair of socks delivered to you, and every one of them is gonna be designed by a different independent artist that we found on the internet. We've got more than two pairs designed, but we're just showing the first two, because part of the joy of this, for me anyway, has been being surprised by what our designers have come up with. 
They look great, they feel great, shipping is free everywhere that has an address, and yes, 100% of the profit goes to charity. 
Right now, it's going to decrease maternal and child mortality in Sierra Leone, but we hope, maybe, as this thing grows, that it'll be able to do more good in more places, in more ways. 
It's already doing extremely well, it launched on Monday, we've got thousands of people signed up already. It's very exciting. I did a bunch of brand deals with TikTok'ers, which has been amazing, and very weird. You also might hear ads for it on some of your favorite podcasts, like 99% Invisible, on the Try Guys Trypod. This is definitely the start of a great sock subscription club. Like, already it is that, but I'm hoping maybe it can be the start of something even bigger than that. 
So, on this Black Friday, if you'd like to give a gift to yourself once a month for all of 2021, you can sign up at AwesomeSocks.Club/vlogbrothers. Or you can give it as a gift to someone else, or you can ask somebody to give it to you as a gift. But you have to sign up before December 11 because that's when we close the subscription down. This way, we know how many socks we should manufacture, and there's no waste. 
And also, if you wanna have a more robust picture of what the sort of commerce landscape of nerdfighteria looks like this season, we're also gonna have a charity calendar that's coming out, fairly soon, it's just not quite ready yet. I'm gonna be making a video about this delightfully creepy Christmas story that I discovered on the internet. I didn't write it, or illustrate it, but I wanted to collaborate with the artist to make a video about it, and the artist will be selling that. I just loved it and I wanted more people to know about it! 
My publisher has put An Absolutely Remarkable Thing on sale in ebook format for $3. So, if you wanted to give that a try, now is the time. 
Also in general advice from somebody who runs an e-commerce company, if you're buying stuff online this Christmas season, order it right now, because the shipping infrastructure of this country is going... is like, already very at its limit. 
Links for Awesome Socks Club in the doobly-doo. John, I'll see you on Tuesday.