Forum - View topicThe state of Animenewsnetwork
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Saber_51
Posts: 25 |
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Hello everyone and staff. I normally never use this forum, nor have I never felt the need to. What I do use however is the information in the encyclopedia and my personal watchlist.
Recently I have seen that a banner has been put on the website that requests a donation. This amounts to about $12,- a year and covers for the lack of advertisement income. Is it possible to find any more background information about this topic in terms of real urgency to consider? I don't think it's intrusive, nor impolite the request is made. I mean, at the end of the day we all need to pay our bills and this website isn't running on thin air. I am just wondering in how far this is really necessary. I thought this website was partially sponsored by the larger anime websites such as Crunchyroll and Funimation. In short; is their really a genuine reason to be donating? Please keep in mind I don't engage that much with this website so I have no clue about how things are managed around here. We talking about a big company that's hosting and publishing? Or are we talking about a server in a basement that well, let's say, has outgrown the hobby vibe. If this post in the wrong sub-forum or has already been covered and my Google skills are sub-par I apologize and would like to be notified. If I offend anyone then I apologize. I don't intent to. I just want to be informed before I drop money. |
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Key
Moderator
 Posts: 18507 Location: Indianapolis, IN (formerly Mimiho Valley) |
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Certainly nothing offensive about the request, but it was placed in the wrong forum. The is Talkback forum is exclusively for responses to posted articles, columns, and reviews, so for future reference this kind of request should be placed in the forum I've moved it to.
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Tempest
 I Run this place.ANN Publisher  Posts: 10468 Location: Do not message me for support. |
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Hi Mathizel,
No offense at all, it's a perfectly reasonable request. First off, let me explain ANN ANN's status and relationship with our readers and advertisers. ANN is not a charity or a not-for-profit. We're a regular for profit corporation. So we're not asking our readers for "donations" but rather patronage. Funimation, Crunchyroll, Viz, Aniplex, etc. are less sponsors of ANN and more advertising clients.Every company approaches their advertising buy with ANN in a different manner, but like any advertiser, they are looking for a return on their investment. Unfortunately, for the most part they don't take into consideration the benefit that ANN's actual existence brings them. It's my firm opinion that ANN's simple existence adds millions of dollars of revenue to these companies. Everything we do provides marketing, branding and advertising for them. So I have been trying to convince them to "sponsor" ANN, but with limited success. I think some of them spend a bit extra with ANN because they support us, but others make their business decisions 100% based on whether $1 spent on ANN will deliver them more than $1 net revenue. If the answer is "no" they don't advertise, even though the failure of ANN might cost that company hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. They're businesses, they make business decisions and I can't fault them for it. Across the board, the advertising landscape has become much more challenging for small-medium sized publishers like ANN. Companies are getting much more demanding, their budgets are getting much more constrained, and cut-throat competition and networks are bringing prices down. The result is that publishers need to look for revenue from different places, and one of those places is from our readers. It's not just ANN, you're seeing it everywhere in media. This is the way things are in 2018, the 100%-ad-supported model just doesn't work like it used to. As for ANN's exact financial situation, I can't divulge it. What I can say is that our cashflow was quite negative in 2017. We finished the year with a lot less money in the bank than we started with. To be fair, this was actually planned and expected. Our plans were to spend a lot of money of development in 2017, and we did that. Unfortunately, we also earned much less revenue from advertising than we expected, so the deficit at the end of the year was more significant than expected. ANN isn't going to go bankrupt in 2018. But if we have another year like 2017, we'll have no choice but to make unfortunate changes at ANN. Maybe that means more invasive advertising, maybe it means paywalls, maybe it means cutting expenses, or god forbid, maybe it means cutting payroll. Right now, if you think ANN is worth it, you can help us avoid that. The support we've received from our readers in the 2 weeks since we put up that message has been tremendous; we've already raised more subscription revenue in those 2 weeks than we did in the previous 50 weeks. But at the same time, so far that only adds up to 0.5% of our annual budget. But at the end of the year, 6% is quite a bump; and if we can get it to 10%, that would be phenomenal. It might mean we could hire more journalists. Last edited by Tempest on Wed Jan 03, 2018 5:25 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Saber_51
Posts: 25 |
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Thank you for the straight-up answer and elaboration on your behalf. I fully understand that you would not disclose the financial situation into the numbers. In-fact judging by the answer you understood very well that, that was not what I was asking.
I have up until now always highly regarded the information and news on this website. Even though the news part isn't that interesting to me personally (this has nothing to do with quality but more with personal interest and a lack of time). So when I read the message I was interested into what happened that this message was deemed necessary. Hence my question. I am glad that you openly admit that there is a commercial interest and even went as far as to elaborate into a fair amount of detail what the goals of the website are. It might not matter to other people as much, but I personally value this kind of openness very high. Based on your answer you don't treat this information as a secret nor do you obscure anything about this. I don't expect myself to be engaging with the forum on a regular basis from now on or anything like that. But you guys offer a service I think is worth paying for. The best of wishes for 2018 and thank you for your efforts. P.S. Key thank you for the help putting this in the right place. |
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Mr. sickVisionz
 Posts: 2175 |
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Just subscribed because of this. |
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Tempest
I Run this place. ANN Publisher Posts: 10468 Location: Do not message me for support. |
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Thanks!
You're both awesome! (as is everyone who has decided to support us). |
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Blood-
 Bargain Hunter Posts: 24233 |
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Thank you to all who have subscribed recently or plan to do so in the future. ANN is an essential component of my anime/manga/merch. hobby and I hope it thrives.
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Redbeard 101
Oscar the Grouch
Forums Superstar  Posts: 16970 |
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Now all of you new people subscribing should go post in the subscriber part of the forum so we can get some fresh blood (Ha!) pumped into it.
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st_owly
 Posts: 5234 Location: Edinburgh, Scotland |
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We only bite if you ask nicely. Plus there are cute kitty photos.
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