Business Plan

The Need

The web is a wonderful place to foster the energy of a fanbase. Websites such as Youtube, DeviantArt, and forums promote user-created content, fan community building, and sharing of interests. However, many of these technologies are used in ways that disrupt the anime industry. Declining DVD sales have been blamed on file sharing and fan subbing. The popularity of the web and the ease of use allows users to rapidly disseminate media that have previously been bound to physical devices. Unfortunately, companies have been much slower than consumers at adopting such new technology, and their sales are falling behind as a result. Greater visibility for new technologies is needed for both providers and consumers alike.

The Audience

Anime Companies

Anime, by definition, is produced in Japan by Japanese companies. Outsourced animators from other countries may produce artwork and frames for anime shows, but they are mainly for Japanese audiences. As such, there are many steps and hurdles for an international market. Not only distribution, but also licensing, localization, and translation need to be taken care of. With new technolgy and business models, many of these tasks can become easier and more transparent for companies, if only they knew about them and adopted them. One of the target audiences for this website are these companies that bring anime overseas. Not all companies are familiar with the tools and resources available on the internet these days, and companies stand to gain if they can reach a larger audience cheaper and faster with productions that are better tailored to their customers.

Anime Fans

By now, anime is followed around the world, even though it is mostly produced in Japan. Many websites are centers of fan activity, some of which include the distribution of licensed material. They complain about the quality, speed, and content in commerically distributed anime. However, some websites like Hulu and companies like Kadokawa do offer services that would be attractive to fans used to using online technologies. If these were publisized more, then they would be more attractive for companies and more anime would be distributed in these ways. This website targets anime watchers and tells them where they can find cheap, fast, but also legal anime.

Reaching the Audience

Since this website is describing online distribution methods, most of its visibility will be online. Word of mouth through blogs, forums, video sites, fanart sites, and other places that fans frequent is the main method of advertising for this site. I will also target fansubbers directly and ask for visibility on their sites. Many fansubbers already try to promote the purchasing of licensed DVDs when they are released, so I will help expand their message with legal online alternatives. For companies, I will reach through online video websites and official websites. I can advertise through official publications and magazines.

The Competitors

There are few sites that go out of their way to promote lisensed distribution of anime other than the companies themselves. Since I want to draw people to go to the companies, such advertising is not against the mission of this website. I will be going against fansubbers, since I am promoting a different way of watching anime. In order to deal with this, one of my goals is to give a good background and overview of the anime production process to give my audience reasons to go for official media. If there are anime watchers that are interested in supporting anime companies, but find DVDs to be too expensive, then this website will direct them to websites that show anime directly from licensed distributors.

The Features

The main outline for this website can be viewed on the Outline Page. This site will contain the history of anime and how it is produced, and then show what websites and companies are doing to distribute anime with new technology.

The Costs

This website does not have many costs other than site upkeep and development. It does not provide any services other than information, so the writing by administrators such as myself is the main cost.

The Revenue

Since the costs are few, then advertising revenue should be enough to support this website. The two main types of ads will be anime goods in general and the specific websites that this site is promoting. I will make sure to not advertise for any external websites that do not follow the goals of this website of legal anime distribution. The main target audience is anime fans, so anime goods will be the major advertising focus. Also, since this website wants to promote other services such as Hulu, there will be advertisements for such services.