Crunchyroll Has Nearly 200,000+ Paid Subscribers

[Quarkboy]

Originally Posted by bigsocce

http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news...ll-this-summer
4.4 million registered users with only 15,000 subscribers. Conversion rate is very low.

The more important number is the number of "active" registered users.

Say, take the number of registered people who have visited the site in the last month. I bet that's more like 1 million or less.

[SeijiSensei]

Originally Posted by bigsocce

4.4 million registered users with only 15,000 subscribers. Conversion rate is very low.

How many of those 4.4 million users have credit cards? Probably a good chunk of them are under 18. What kind of figure would we have if we excluded people who watch only Naruto Shippuden?

Are there other estimates from market research of the size of the American anime audience? Are they consistent with this four million figure? For example, I dug up some ratings for [adult swim]. In the earliest hour, they drew about a million households in 2008, but they don't show anime in that time slot. The audience fell by half after 12:30 am. Reports of their most successful shows routinely encompass American programs like Robot Chicken and Family Guy.

[velvet nightmare]

Originally Posted by Quarkboy

Say, take the number of registered people who have visited the site in the last month. I bet that's more like 1 million or less.

you're still looking at 0.015

still low as hell

[Quarkboy]

Originally Posted by velvet nightmare

you're still looking at 0.015

still low as hell

Compared to what, exactly?

Take, say megaupload or something. I wonder how many free vs. premium users they have? How about a site like niconico douga? How many premium members does it have vs. free users?

Face it, for all you know that could be the highest ratio for any website in its general class. We don't have any numbers to compare it too.

[velvet nightmare]

you can look at the hard numbers

15,000 multiplied by the subscription fee (don't remember how much it is)

is still negligible compared to the 1 million (minimum you assume) multiplied by ad revenues (few cents or something?)

the sheer volume of people just going to the site and loading and clicking ads completely blows the revenue stream from subscriptions out of the water

[Quarkboy]

Originally Posted by velvet nightmare

you can look at the hard numbers

15,000 multiplied by the subscription fee (don't remember how much it is)

is still negligible compared to the 1 million (minimum you assume) multiplied by ad revenues (few cents or something?)

the sheer volume of people just going to the site and loading and clicking ads completely blows the revenue stream from subscriptions out of the water

You have no idea how tiny the click through rate on banner ads is, do you? Maybe 0.01 if you're lucky. Views only net you like, a negligible amount.
CR has video imbed ads, but not many yet.

1 million free visitors *0.01 click through rate*5 cent per click = $500
And how often do each of these visitors come by? Like, once a week?
15,000 members at $7 a month is $105,000 a month.

Membership revenue per month ~ $100,000
Banner ad revenue ~ $500

I really have no idea what you are smoking.

The real money for the free people comes from the imbedded ads in the videos, which probably nets them a couple K a month, but it's comparable to the membership revenue.

[velvet nightmare]

there's gotta be a bigger multiplier that i failed to mention but won't bother to look up

so going by your idea, if google.com puts up a banner on their front page, it'll only net them 1 cent each time someone goes through? i doubt it
the amount they earn from each visitor has to vary depending on the site


someone has to be paying to even put up the ads and the click through is just an added plus, otherwise if it's free of cost to put up ads on their site, it would be plastered left and right

[Quarkboy]

Originally Posted by velvet nightmare

there's gotta be a bigger multiplier that i failed to mention but won't bother to look up

so going by your idea, if google.com puts up a banner on their front page, it'll only net them 1 cent each time someone goes through? i doubt it
the amount they earn from each visitor has to vary depending on the site


someone has to be paying to even put up the ads and the click through is just an added plus, otherwise if it's free of cost to put up ads on their site, it would be plastered left and right

I suggest you read this:

https://www.google.com/adsense/suppo...y?answer=81567

Google adsense is a good general baseline for web advertising, so consider these ballpark figures:

quoting from the page:

Clickthrough Rate (CTR) - The other factor that influences earnings is clickthrough rate (CTR). CTR is a measure of how often users click on your ads. For example, if you receive one click on your ad after 100 people have viewed that ad, you are said to have a CTR of 1%. Once again, the "average" CTR for a website will vary based on the site. However, for a larger site, 1% might be considered a decent clickthrough rate.

While there's no magic formula to determine how much revenue you'll receive based on a certain amount of traffic, it helps to be realistic about your earning potential. For example, for every thousand page impressions you receive, you might earn anywhere from $0.05 to $5.00. While most publishers will fall within this range, you might notice that it's a very large range. Factors such as cost-per-click (CPC) and clickthrough rate (CTR), explained below, have a large impact on where in this range you might fall. In addition, sites with very low or inconsistent traffic are likely to fluctuate within a much larger range.

No one pays a website to put up ads. Web advertising is all based on the number of people that SEES that ads, not on their existence.

[bigsocce]

Originally Posted by Quarkboy

The real money for the free people comes from the imbedded ads in the videos, which probably nets them a couple K a month, but it's comparable to the membership revenue.

Look at hulu who relies solely on embedded ads. For a 24 minutes episodes, there are about three 30 seconds ad (sometimes less). Hulu charge $25-$30 per 1000 views (its call CPM). Or about 2.5-3 cents per view per ad.

It is projected that hulu will earn nearly $180 million in ad revenue in 2009.

Unfortunately, crunchyroll is not very attractive to many companies and not getting a lot of ads.

Assume an ad is worth 2 cents per view or $20 CPM. And CR embedded 1 ad per 1 episode. 500,000 people watching 1 episode of Naruto, that would generate 2 cent x 1 ad x 500,000 = $10,000.

[bigsocce]

I read that CR is nearing 20,000 subscribers now and might even already passed that.

One Piece soon to be simulcast like Naruto?

[cyth]

Originally Posted by bigsocce

One Piece soon to be simulcast like Naruto?

AFAIK, Funimation is doing that separately. Has this changed?

[bayoab]

Originally Posted by bigsocce

I read that CR is nearing 20,000 subscribers now and might even already passed that.

Source?

One Piece soon to be simulcast like Naruto?

http://www.onepieceofficial.com/videos.aspx

[Quarkboy]

Originally Posted by bayoab

Source?


http://www.onepieceofficial.com/videos.aspx

The latest publicly reported number is more than 15,000, as of a few days ago, from this article

http://animeanime.jp/biz/archives/2009/05/_76.html

[azrael910]

I think crunchyroll is a step in the right direction. I still think it has a long ways to go, but some of the recent progress it has made is encouraging.

The bottom line is that old business models won't work for anime distribution. The majority of anime fans are young, tech savvy, and have little in the way of disposable income. When dealing with a product that can be distributed online, such a target demographic for your product is troublesome to say the least.

I've been watching some of the shows released on CR and Funi's website. I haven't purchased a subscription with CR since I'll be overseas for most of the summer.

Overall I like what I'm seeing, but I don't think it will replace fansubs quite yet. The video quality could use improvement and their are typos in the subtitles every now and then, but overall, not too bad. I don't speak japanese so I can't vouch for the accuracy of the subs, but based on what I know of how many fansubbers operate, it is likely an improvement. And translation isn't strictly a problem related to fansubs either, I was ripped when I saw "future men" on the haruhi DVDs I purchased. It sounded like something I'd run into on a bootleg.

I think as streaming technology increases and the websites gain more experience the quality will improve. Since people are subscribing, that means the site will have time to mature. While it's still in its infancy, I do think online streaming is the future of how we will view anime. Physical media will likely become more of a nice market for high profile titles, but I think that market will turn upside down as Blu-ray becomes more common.

My only concern is just how profitable is this method? Is this enough to support the industry? How much of this money makes it back into the hands of the originators? Or will it just keep it on life support? While $100K+ a month sounds like a great deal of money, I'm not sure what kind of costs places like CR are dealing with.

[bigsocce]

Originally Posted by azrael910

My only concern is just how profitable is this method? Is this enough to support the industry? How much of this money makes it back into the hands of the originators? Or will it just keep it on life support? While $100K+ a month sounds like a great deal of money, I'm not sure what kind of costs places like CR are dealing with.

If their revenue sharing model is similar to hulu.com, then it's 70% to content providers and CR keeps 30%.

While it is not a lot of money yet, it's better than receiving nothing which is what happen when viewers watch fansubs.

[npcomplete]

Originally Posted by bigsocce

If their revenue sharing model is similar to hulu.com, then it's 70% to content providers and CR keeps 30%.

While it is not a lot of money yet, it's better than receiving nothing which is what happen when viewers watch fansubs.. for the shows available on CR.. in your country.. unless you're a paying member

There, corrected for you

however, if they also hold or share the rights for merchandise, they would still make a lot of money from fansub viewers nonetheless.
Not saying people shouldn't watch CR; just saying that merchandise is another, actually more lucrative source of income for licensors

[bigsocce]

Originally Posted by npcomplete

There, corrected for you

however, if they also hold or share the rights for merchandise, they would still make a lot of money from fansub viewers nonetheless.
Not saying people shouldn't watch CR; just saying that merchandise is another, actually more lucrative source of income for licensors

Fansub is good to get your anime out there. With a legal free alternative like CR, anime studios do get something back. Ask the content providers what they like to see: legal streaming of their anime where they get some money back or illegal fansub of their anime where they get nothing back.

Merchandise is only lucrative if people buy DVDs or toys associated with that anime.

Just read that hulu might follow CR and have subscription model for 'no ad' viewings of tv shows. source: google news

[SeijiSensei]

Originally Posted by bigsocce

illegal fansub of their anime where they get nothing back.

Merchandise is only lucrative if people buy DVDs or toys associated with that anime.

Those two statements are a bit inconsistent, don't you think? Looking across the room at the DVDs on my shelf, I can think of only one series that I bought without first having watched a fansub, and in that case (Abenobashi) it was because I had watched it on ADV's cable channel. So it's really not true to say the studios get "nothing" back. In my case they wouldn't have gotten anything back were it not for fansubs.

Producers continue to believe, or at least claim to believe, that every fansub viewing constitutes a lost sale. Given that a large fraction of fansub viewers are teens and young adults with limited financial resources, that's just an unsupportable perspective. Plus the producers never appear to consider the role fansubs play in developing sales to people like me. There's no easy answer to the question of how fansubs affect actual sales of DVDs and merchandise. I'm sure it varies enormously from show to show. Unfortunately most discussions of these issues cast them in all-or-nothing terms which really provide only heat but cast little light on the true economic effects of fansubbing.

While Crunchy offers the possibility that the studios might see some small additional revenue from advertising, there will still be many shows that will never appear outside Japan in any legal form. I can list a number of shows that I would purchase if they were available in R1, but they're apparently considered too niche by licensors. (Even a veritable franchise like Nodame Cantabile seems unlikely ever to appear in R1 at this point.) In a few such cases I've bought the Japanese OST albums (Bartender and Dennou Coil, for instance). But to suggest that somehow the studios have lost something because I've watched those shows in fansubs is just ludicrous. If anything, they gained some soundtrack revenues they'd never have seen otherwise.

[Lilithium]

Hey folks, I've been delegating many of my anime downloads to watching them streamed on Crunchyroll. I tried the 2-week trial at first, and I really liked what I was getting, so when it ended, I subscribed for 365 days.

This seems to be the future of watching anime currently aired in Japan. And, their subs are not half-bad either. In fact, I can't really complain about them whatsoever. And, finally, the best thing is they have most of their shows in up to 720p quality. As someone who watches her anime on a external HDTV, with a high-quality HDMI cable plugged into my laptop, I get the full experience, and I absolutely love it.

Anyone else into Crunchyroll? I'd preferred no bashing of the website if possible, as it's doing a lot of good for the community, in fact, the only thing I can complain about is the library, and it's forum, at least the library problem is constantly being fixed with adding older series. I hope Bandai gets in on it too. That would be awesome.

[MeoTwister5]

The problem with CR is that when they started pay to watch streaming they started region blocking through the IP, and people like me who would actually pay to watch can no longer access their licensed programs.