This is very important news to all who buy anime products! The evil bootleg anime product makers have gone too far this time...
As some of you may know, bootleg anime products is a major problem in the industry. Good Smile Company, Kotobukiya, Square-Enix figures are constantly being bootlegged by cheap Hong-Kong/Chinese factories. Same goes for popular jewelry and accessory items from big hit series like Bleach, Naruto and Death Note.
As of late yesterday, my main wholesaler, AAAanime.com put out a notice they received from Viz about recently recalled products. The products were not that of Viz or their licensees GE Animation and Great Eastern, but from the stupid bootleggers, Team Work Trading.
The issue? Well, what's been a problem in many cheap Chinese factories? LEAD POISONING.
That's right, if you have bought these horrible copies from a bootleg seller on eBay, at a con, online, or anywhere else...GET RID OF THEM!
Please note that my company, Chuck's Anime Shrine does NOT and will NOT sell ANY bootleg items. My company is a legit anime business and is registered with only the real suppliers in the industry (AAAanime.com, Diamond Comics, YesAnime.com and Mile-Stone.jp).
ALL Naruto, Bleach, Death Note accessories that I might sell in my main store, Amazon and eBay branches are the legit, non-toxic GE Animation/Great Eastern products.
I see that finally after a long time, there is some movement in the Member's Blog. Thank you all who are starting to write there. Over time I will link up the member posts with their relevant topic sites. For example, the anime figures page will have member's posts about figures as well to help gain more exposure and make it worth it to post here.
The contest for the Free Nendoroid Kureha Figure is still going due to the long time it took to get even just these few posts. Once enough people post (~10+), I'll do the very hard task of choosing the winner. I'll also sweeten the deal by giving out Google Wave invites to all those who post. Not sure if Google Wave is really that hard to get now but either way, I'll add that for all who post on the blog.
Also, the member's rules got updated a bit. You CAN link to ecchi/sexy anime sites but be sure to warn people of the links and you can write a post as big as you want and post a good amount of images too. I can use the "fullpost html span" trick to shorten the post on the main blog/archives screen or eventually have it automated; so blog to your heart's content ^_^
For a while I have been trying to create a comment system that would be useful, display avatars, allow YouTube clips to be posted in-comment as well as the ability to reply to comments. Thankfully that came a bit easy with the Google Friend Connect comment gadget. It allows all of that as well as the ability to sign in via Google, AIM, openID and until any spam rolls in, I'll continue to allow anonymous comments too. Sadly, the old google Blogger comment system that was on the site had to be commented out (haha, get it?) and any previous comments are no longer visible. The old comment system was a bit of a bore and thus not many comments were on there in the first place. I also did the same for anime.fm and charlesgaffney.com. The coding for this comment system, like most of the stuff with google is open-source and internet wide so expect more customizations but at least all comments will be kept here for good on the site....of course unless it's spam.
It seems I have to remind people about this. I am giving away a FREE Nendoroid Kureha figure with this current contest. The purpose of the contest is to promote my new member's blog and to help you all link up your anime sites better....and to give a lucky reader this adorable figure.
Some of you have emailed me and got the rights to start blogging but for some odd reason...haven't made a single post! o_O You have to be in it to win it and being a co-author on this site is a step in the right direction but WON'T make you eligible to possibly win this cute figure.
For those of you who never heard of this, a few months back I created a Member's Blog. Like some other anime sites, it allows you to blog right here about say the latest anime news, your figure collection, anime rumors, etc. The need for this portion of the site comes as my blog roll that links all my fellow anime sites has gotten too large and many of you want to link in to promote your site. My site isn't as big as say Gaia or Danny Choo's yet but up until now, I've been getting 5K unique views per day at an average alexa.com ranking of 150K which is perfect for helping people visit your site...and of course a number of emails for hooking up fellow anime bloggers.
As of yesterday I even completed a deal with Otaku USA Magazine to post ads of this site and my anime store. (more on that in a future post) With 300K subscribers to that magazine, I very much expect and aim for a larger boost in traffic as to make any guest blogging here worth the effort.
Here again is how you can be a part of this contest:
Anyways, here's what you need to do to hopefully get your hands on Kureha:
From blogger.com create a blog post showing say, your otaku room, your anime figure collection, why you are into anime or something relating to anime, japan or the like.
Just one decent blog post with at least one picture is fine and gets you entered in the contest. Remember to have your blogger profile have a link to your anime site/blog so you can gain good exposure. A link at the end of your blog post is fine....just no spamming and nothing non-related to anime, japan, etc -_- .
From then you can blog to your heart's desire about say a new anime figure that came out, etc. really good or interesting posts will be promoted to the main blog, but all you need is one post to get you in the contest..the rest is just extra credit and just helps expose you and your blog. (just no more than say 3 posts a day per user)
Of course, please follow the Member's Blog rules and don't post anything beyond PG-13, pornographic, illegal, etc. Violators will be banned -_-
One winner will be chosen from the list of guest bloggers on October 3rd 2009 or once around 10 or so guest bloggers post if after the given date. (obviously now the latter seems to be what will be done)
Many sites have this, the ability to post their feeds with thumbnail photos, but my God is it a pain to find out HOW to do it, even for a programmer, like me. Even more of a trouble is that my blogs are all run from my own server/sites; so, despite this being a "blogger" blog, I get no customization love from Google being that this isn't a .blogspot blog or Wordpress blog -_-
Having thumbnail recent posts and label posts looks far better than the regular text feeds we commonly see with RSS feed aggregation. Thanks to a new reworking on the feed2js by engadgeteer.com's Bryan (who btw is also an anime fan), I was able to finally automate, thumbnailed posts for my blog and their labels. Of course, I'd like to have the code be local to my own site for SEO and security purposes, but this will do for now till I work a deal with them.
Check out some of the areas I've added recent posts to, like the front page (at the bottom), here (check below), and even on sections like anime figures, cosplay and anime music. Now with this, I can bring back old sections of the site like say Final Fantasy VII Tifa's section and have all posts about Tifa show under her gallery of photos automatically. This will then be integraded with the Member's Blog for more exposure to your posts.
Speaking of the member's blog, um, some of you signed up to blog and possibly win Nendoroid Kureha but haven't posted a single post -_- You have to be in it to win it guys, and being in the contest means posting on the Member's Blog .
Thanks again engadgeteer.com and their developer, Bryan for this much needed feature.
Finally, after a long, long time I have created a new contest for you, my loyal readers. The prize, the cute and adorable Nendoroid Kureha. Yes, I'm once again taking the time to talk about the Member's Blog section; but hey, it's a cool feature to be able to write your own blog posts and promote your anime blog here...on my blog. Apparently I haven't had anyone ask to be a co-author and promote their otaku life and site here. Also the blogrolling.com blog roll is getting way too long to expose some of your sites correctly so this new section is something I hope can help make my site aid the anime fan community better. Plus...well, this site is slowly creeping to the 100,000 alexa rank and less so things are looking to be on track.
Anyways, here's what you need to do to hopefully get your hands on Kureha:
From blogger.com create a blog post showing say, your otaku room, your anime figure collection, why you are into anime or something relating to anime, japan or the like.
Just one decent blog post with at least one picture is fine and gets you entered in the contest. Remember to have your blogger profile have a link to your anime site/blog so you can gain good exposure. A link at the end of your blog post is fine....just no spamming and nothing non-related to anime, japan, etc -_- .
From then you can blog to your heart's desire about say a new anime figure that came out, etc. really good or interesting posts will be promoted to the main blog, but all you need is one post to get you in the contest..the rest is just extra credit and just helps expose you and your blog. (just no more than say 3 posts a day per user)
Of course, please follow the Member's Blog rules and don't post anything beyond PG-13, pornographic, illegal, etc. Violators will be banned -_-
One winner will be chosen from the list of guest bloggers on October 3rd 2009 or once around 10 or so guest bloggers post if after the given date.
Thanks to Paypal, I was able to add a much needed feature to my anime store. That feature of course is is to give anyone shopping at my store the ability to buy and redeem gift certificates. They start as low as $5 and go up to $1000. I made it simple and had it as one button that opens up a secure page on Paypal.com in which you can choose the amount with the supplied drop-down menu. The Paypal gift certificate makes it so that you can print it out to give to someone or email them with a customize message as well. This is good if you know of a friend that is an anime fan but you are not sure what to get them, or if you want to give yourself a budget on what to spend. Trust me, I collect anime figures and merchandise too and particularly at cons, I have to limit myself ^^;;;
Hope anyone reading this blog can make good use of this feature. I have the button shown below as well as on the front page of the store of course.
(btw, the picture above is of course, Nendoroid Zange-chan)
Heading into the dog days of summer and finally this year we are actually getting summer weather here in New York. The anime business has been heating up for me as well (thus explains some of my blogging absence ^^;;). It doesn't help that my p/t job is still thorn in my side and is continuing to dig just as deep as it did before I almost quit last year. Anyways, with the business starting to do well again, I'm going to put up a contest by next week. This time I promise. Been waaaay too long since the last contest and I've also keep saying "another one is coming". So by some time next week, there will be a contest and hopefully more good stuff here on the site. As for now, enjoy this great anime pic.
In case you all haven't noticed, I installed the Tweetboard application to the bulk of the site (seen as a tab on the left side). If, like me, you use twitter alot, this comes in handy and allows for some more real-time convos here on the site which of course is synced into twitter. Big thanks to the developers of TweetBoard. Chances are, I'll be seeing if I'm allowed to modifiy it a bit more to go with my planned upgrades to the blog and site.
Been one of those busy weeks. So while I get some more posts ready for all of you, here's an anime girl picture that you'd might like. I'm also in the process of setting up a test/beta version of this blog so you can get a glimpse of any upgrades to the blog. Been looking all over for coding that will put up relevant posts as well as automatically thumbnailed posts...but Blogger is not friendly to customizations outside of the .blogspot.com site setup -_-. I'm a programmer, so I'll work my way around their errors somehow.
On the production block:
More member blog visibility and functions (don't be afraid to post your own posts there)
Great news. As of today I've basically completed a part of the blog that I think you all will like. I have created a member driven portion of the blog. In other words, if you get approved, you can create blog posts here on my blog! It's basically a utilization of Blogger's author sign-up function but it should work pretty well.
I actually made it a brand new blog but embedded it here in the site. If you got the email with "Member Rules"..sorry that was an accident; was suppose to go to the member blog ^^;; Still working out the kinks.
So if any one want to help add more anime posts, it can be done ^_^ Check out the rules and how to get involved below. Please note that once I hit about 100 authors, I'll reach my limit. I'm doubtful the site is THAT popular but..always good to warn evryone.
In related news. Due to the very buggy and easily hacked coding of phpBB, the anime forum will have to be taken away Y_Y Nothing but spam went there and now its somehow broken. Forums are very Web 1.0 anyways and unless its a place like gaiaonline...a forum is not so useful in today's online world anymore. So this member's blog will basically be a replacement. The member blog will be shown here on this blog better...just need to fix some design aspects. Anyways...on to the rules and other info:
What's in it for you?
Drive some traffic to your anime/otaku blog: Chuck's Anime Shrine is continuing to gain more and more traffic over time. As of this post, my alexa traffic rank is around 170,000 with 3000+ visitors to the whole site daily and around 1000 unique visitors daily to the blog alone. I'm at work to continue to increase the traffic to the site by adding more features and making this a site worthy of visits from my fellow anime fans.
Chances to participate in future contests: For some time now I've not done contests but when I do I'll be sure to give away anime products from my anime store. Being a part of the member's blog will be another way for you to be noticed and hopefully get you some cool stuff and further promote your own sites ^_^
Rules:
Absolutely no hentai, loli, porn, offensive, extremely religious, or racist material.
Absolutely no links to any sites with the items in rule #1
Anime figures and manga mentions can be posted but no hentai or loli. Cast off figures must be shown in full clothed form and must not be too revealing
Material in the blog posts must be related to: anime, manga, Japan, video games or anything that anime fans would deem interesting.
No spamming. Google and blogger automatically create links on your user name when you post that should bring people to your site the natural way. You can link to your blog if you have more material to show in a related blog post, but NO topics with the blatant crazy advertising of your blog or a non-related blog i.e ("Click here for money tips.", etc). Other members won't care to click and it's distasteful -_-
If possible, try to have one related picture per post that acts as a header to your blog post and reflects the topic shown (kind of how this post is done). This makes the post look nice and will create even more traffic to your post.
Try to keep post titles small and to the point. Smaller titles yield better search results and make your posts look better.
Don't overload a post with pictures. Use services like Flickr, photobucket or your own related blog to host the images...and again no images that have items that are in rule #1...I can't stress that enough -_-
Posts can be short or large but please no posts that are too large.
Any violations will mark an instant removal from the blog and from the Google Friend Connect member list of this site.
We at Chuck's Anime Shrine have the right at any time to remove a blog post and member, so please follow the rules...a link to report a post will also be up on the blog for extra safety.
How to get involved:
Join the growing list of members of Chuck's Anime Shrine by clicking the "join this site" button in the Google Friend Connect part of this page.
Email me asking to be an author for Chuck's Anime Shrine...only after step one is done. I need to make sure you are a legit member.
Be sure to tell me your member name in the Google Friend Connect system and your email must match the given user's email. Again, for the safety of other members and to weed out spammers.
If approved, I will invite you to be an author on the site.
Accept the invitation
From your account on blogger.com, you can now begin posting.
Questions, Concerns:
Email me for any questions about the rules or how to get involved. As the site's popularity continues to grow...some emails might go through the cracks but I'll work as best I can to answer any questions. I set times that I go through my massive inbox of emails and I'm only human so immediate answers might not happen always.
I finally got something to add to the podcast section of this site. As of a few days ago, I was asked to be part of a podcast with anime3000.com. Big thanks to Sean Russell for asking me to drop by. This is actually part of two podcasts, both pertaining to the history of video games and where we feel its heading to. The first pod cast shown here is a look back at the different generations of game consoles and of course we talked about what the game companies did well...and not so well. The rest of our recording, to be up some time soon, is essentially the second half of our 2 hour cast and is mainly us ranting on what is to come with gaming and more ranting as well. So now you all can hear what I sound like...which is either good or bad ^^;; On the panel was:
Got an iPhone? Well, now you won't have to wait too long for my site to load. As of today I made a very simplistic but somewhat useful mobile section to the site. as of this post, if you go to the main part of my site, chucksanimeshrine.com and you have an iPhone, you will be redirected to the Mobile page. From there you can view that anime, figure, idol photo galleries and the mobile version of this blog as well.
If you don't have an iPhone, you can still bookmark that page. The links should still act accordingly for your phone since the blog link goes to the rss feed and the gallery link goes to the MoblieMe gallery page directly , thus if your phone can convert an RSS page and if the MobileMe site can detect your phone...it should work ok. Also, as you can see below, a few week ago or so I added an iPhone web icon for the site so this site can almost act and look like an iPhone app.
If I can, down the road I'l add the video, music and store sections...but for now, lets keep it simple ^^;
Good news for you K-ON! fans. Looks as if Playlist.com has both the "Cagayake! GIRLS" and the "Don't Say Lazy" singles by Aki Toyosaki & co. from the K-ON! opening and ending sequences. Naturally I added them to the Anime.fm Anime Playlist and the anime music section here on CAS. If I can get a hold of the whole Cagayake! GIRLS CD, I'll be sure to post it up in my store. Gotta give the music artists their dues of course.
Enjoy K-ON! fans ^_^.
(Update: Added the Anime.fm widget below...if you don't want to travel to Anime.fm or the Music section of this site)
Something I should have done long ago, but up is the Chuck's Anime Shrine Flickr group. Post what ever anime/otaku related photos you want up there. This adds another way to submit fan art than just the MobleMe part of my site. The group is new but hopefully it can help gain some eposure for all of you ^^;;
Not so much new news but as of recently, Yahoo, as part of their crazy restructuring will drop the free web hosting service, Geocities. Back in December till around March of 2002, I first posted this site on Geocities so I can thank my very start to the service. The offical release of Chuck's Anime Shrine then happened in March when I payed for service on ocatch.com, then migrated to Netfirms.com an then finally to globat.com. Yep, I still use a web hosting service for the site after all this time. Granted, yes I should soon migrate to running my own servers as the traffic becomes higher and higher but..I'll leave that to the future.
Anyways, Geocities and sites like xanga.com were home to the first anime fan websites. Many of them are long gone, sadly but these were the Myspaces and Facebooks of their time. We proudly showed what we loved on a site that was almost our own. To me showing your fandom on a Myspace page or Facebook just isn't the same as having your own site. For those who are still trucking on in Geocities, time to make a move before it's too late.
As an honor to the anime fan sites of old, I'll be going back to making "shrines" of different series and games. Some of which I have on here already and of course was the original point of my anime website in the first place. These "shrines" go beyond the typical blog post or archive and I won't them die on my watch. With this site and blog working with some of the anime companies directly, either it be promos (like the Naruto one recently) or through my store, I'll have more leverage to promote these series and give them some sort of permanent space on the web. One thing us true anime fans never do is forget a series we watched. We eventually go back to watching them again because anime means more to us than a simple cartoon show or the like, even as we get older.
Just a little addition I did for the site in preparation for an iPhone/mobile friendly version of the site. I made an iPhone webclip icon for the homepage of your phone. It's from the picture I drew and looks a lot better on the iPhone/ iPod Touch springboard than the typical screenshot.
So, if you want to add this site to your iPhone, go ahead and the image above is what you'll see ^_^
How To Create an iPhone Webclip Icon for Your Website:
Create a 57x57 pixel .png image
Name it "apple-touch-icon.png"
Add it to your site's root folder (web docs root..not your server)
Ok, so the economy has been doing bad. We can go on for hours on the causes, the culprits and the results of many of the actions taken. One action trying to be done will automatically prevent new jobs, destroy thousands of current ones and cause any type of recovery we see now to go out the window. It's a law that would force you to pay sales tax on say anime figures you buy outside your own state.
I'm talking about the tired case of Quill vs. North Dakota, aka the e-commerce tax, or the "amazon tax." Looks as if two moronic politicians, Senator Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.) and Representative Bill Delahunt (D-Mass.) want to try to unconstitutionally break a Supreme Court ruling that clearly states that you only pay sales tax if the business you purchase from is in the state you reside. I've already made my point clear and as of today, the great editors and staff at BusinessWeek.com put my comment on the front page for today.
Many Internet businesses have grown despite what the economy has thrown at them. My anime business has grown steadily as well despite me starting it in late 2006 and throughout this whole recession, my customer service has been creating a thriving company that hopefully soon I can create jobs with. New York already broke the laws of the land by having it where you have to pay the already inflated New York sales tax even if you don't live in NY!!
Because many rich scammers out there can't run their hedge funds anymore, the states are strapping for cash they once had from these legal Ponzi Schemes and that means your anime items, not just from me, but from every anime business or all products from all e-commerce businesses will cost more for you. Instead of doing the right thing, many states want to steal money from the average citizen by imposing this tax. Granted a very small universal tax should be a solution to accommodate the state's need and ours but...we all know that won't happen either because of states like New York who can't balance their budget even in an utopian society.
I know I'm sounding much like Code Geass's Lelouche but fighting this is a must for anyone who wants to see the economy continue to recover from such idiotic actions. Call your state representative or aid ebay.com and overstock.com in their fight against this. You can also add to the discussion on BusinessWeek.com along with me. Despite what naysayers think, many e-commerce sites, including my own already pay enough taxes to our state government. I cringe every time I have to impose the Suffolk County 8.625% sales tax on anime figures bought by my fellow New Yorkers. An besides, if my company grows and I add more employees, income tax comes into play and that's where the money should come from! Its a crime to begin with and there is no way this crime should be allowed to expand.
Last Tuesday me, along with a select few got the honor to visit the BusinessWeek headquarters in NYC. We were nominated as BusinessWeek's top readers of 2008 and the purpose of the meeting was to go over what BW and the BusinessWeek.com site should improve on and try to portray in this coming year. At the top floor of the McGraw-Hill building we were greeted to a wonderful and very talkative cocktail party and then a very tasty dinner and dessert.
The view from the 50th floor (in dire need of a better camera ^^;)
The whole set up was thanks to BusinessWeek's Editor-in-Chief, John Byrne, and his top editors of whom we got to meet with. It was wonderful to see such a large media company take the time and effort to reach out to their readers like this. John and the staff are all very down-to-earth and a pleasure to speak wit. In no way, shape or form did we feel belittled by them being there. (Can't say the same about my p/t job's boss though.) One of the obvious truths we are seeing in public media is that the media is being diluted by the numerous blogs and of course the dwindling newspaper sales thanks to the good old internet.
The one of the biggest topics we talked about though was the workings of different comment systems on the website and on sites in general. Currently, BW has a more welcoming commenting system than say engadget.com or youtube. For the most part you can state your opinion logically like an educated adult and not get too much slack. The balance of whether to have comments or not is always a big choice for a webmaster. There are times that garbage and childish comments by "trolls" can ruin the image of a story or site, yet the user ingagement make the site come alive so you do need it to some degree. One good example just from here on CAS is the fact that I had to make it so members only can post on the "Otaku Blurbs". This was after a troll or two got a hold of the feature.
So, what comment system would be good for both here or on a site on say, BusinessWeek?
A quick shot us at the table
The other major topic that came up has been the current buzz on the web for the past year now. I'm talking of course about Twitter. In the coming months, BW will be utilizing both the comment system and Twitter together in different ways, most likely with use of # hashmarks to better categorize the events in business and throughout their site. Finding a use for Twitter outside of its obvious social fad has been the main question for many in both social and business circles. I mentioned a bit of a site I just started working with, beamagpie.com in which you can approve tweets to broadcast on your account and the more followers you have..the more you can get payed. Not certain on how well it'll work and I'll assume more like it will be down the road. Granted of course, my goal is to never come off as money grubbing advertiser on Twitter. Such actions by any person there will prevent any meaningful followship and might cause many of the issues that plague Facebook for the site as a whole.
I'll ask you, the readers of CAS... what do you find useful about Twitter? For me right now, it drives traffic to my site...and is a great place to vent with listeners.
...
After a 4+ hour talk we all parted our ways and we even got some great parting gifts as well like a shirt, BusinessWeek bag, flash memory card and flashlight. Another little tidbit is that this might be the first of many meetings with a potential creation of the Business Week Readers Advisory Panel.
Part of our parting gifts, a BW flash memory card
Here's the awesome BW we got
To everyone I met there at the meeting, I had a great time and it was an honor to meet you all, both the wonderful readers and the BW staff ^_^ Sorry I didn't mention any names, didn't want to single anyone out at all.
Here's to a great 2009 and hopefully more insightful meetings like this one.
Just added a new feature today. For those who want to advertise say their anime con, anime store, video game store, sushi restaurant, etc; you can now do that on the site. The link can be found under the Sponsors section or where you might see this cute pic of Yuki Nagato.
The traffic on my site has been on the rise over the past year. I was thinking of doing what otaku guru Danny Choo does by selling adspace at a fixed rate, but my site has yet to even reach half the views he has ^^; (Danny gets about 10 or so million unique visitors a month and his ad prices are actually really good for that kind of exposure..so check it out if you can as well)
Currently, as of this date, my average daily unique views are about 2000 with it growing every week (or about 60,000 a month). My alexa ranking is at about 190,000 and about half or more of my traffic comes to the blog here. I'll be posting stats from my webhosts her on this post or on futrue posts...so you guys know exactly how much is coming in.
The ad box is done by projectwonderful.com and instead of giving a flat rate for ads, they let me simply auction off the spot. This makes it fair for any would-be advertisors since you can determine the daily price of your ad. Its starting off free, but won't be that since somebody can out bid you at any time ^^;
Ad info:
Size: 300px x 200px Prefered ads: anime, game, japan, gadget, otaku related items (yep, I own an anime store but I don't mind anime store links shown there as well)
In case you haven't noticed for the past month, as of this post on the right hand side you can find "Otaku Blurbs" Like my role-model DannyChoo's Puchi Blurbs, this little feature lets you state what you are doing right now. Very much like twitter.com's micro blogging but with an added ability. You can put a link to a youtube video and your post will show the thumbnail of it. I did an example a while back showing it.
It's all part of the new Google Friend Connect interface. Be sure to join my site as well ^_^
For the second time I once again grace the front page of BusinessWeek's website. This time, instead of poking fun at Secretary of Treasury Paulson, I got my own article up there. The article might not be anything of use for my fellow anime fans but in it I talk about how email is the number one form of communication between me and my customers, which is usually fellow otaku. Business has been getting rather busy but even so, I'm not answering phone calls like a maniac as seen in my day-job or in many other businesses. Granted, the anime fan demographic is that of people who are in this century and who would use email instead of a phone to answer simple questions.
Basically, we all know jobs could and should be kept here in the US (for those of us living in the US). I know many people, anime fans or not would love job opportunities to open up if major companies just keep their international staff internationally. Anyways, check up on the article if you'd like.
I know, I'm a bit late on this now that it's Jan. 4th but here's my little look back of 2008, my anime site during 2008 and other cool events.
For many, it was a crappy year. The warnings I gave many who threw their money and time into things like expensive college degrees for so-called "good jobs", to stocks to a new home sure got their rude awakening. I feel bad for those who didn't fair well in 08 and I do hope for a better 2009 but I'll say it again....if you don't get control of your life (instead of depending on a job or boss to take care of you), this will happen over and over again. The financial morons who caused many problems will go away free and those who thought that working hard for a job will once again get the short end of the stick. You all work hard, so do what you love and love what you do. Don't get a degree or job just because your parents said "There's money in it" That's nothing but slavery with a paycheck attached to it. Anyways, on to the anime site.
As some of you know as of a few weeks ago I claimed my freedom from my job. Well, I'm still at my job but only on a part-time deal (two days a week to be exact). I did leave out of anger and frustration plus the anime biz has been growing like crazy. The full "Leap of Faith" will happen but I'm basically a free man as of x-mas eve.
Anyways (sry ranting again ^^), some of you might have noticed a lack of updates..that's mainly from the the anime biz getting well...busy. Economists and the public cried how sad sales and business was for 2008 but I sure saw different. Here's a list of what happened in 2008 for me:
(Please note that I'm not doing this to brag, I wanted to show you all that 2008 didn't have to suck and if you just follow your dreams and ignore society's crys for unneeded extended college time, jobs and drudgery, you'll do fine. Of course anything you do, you got to work for it. Make sure you work for yourself and you are not wasting your life filling you're boss's pockets and ego.)
Aquired anime.fm
Started my own personal blog at charlesgaffney.com
CAS version 4.0 redesign
Gave out figures for contests
Gave out Free Death Note Movie II Tickets thanks to a deal with Fathom Events
Anime sales in 2007 $40K. In 2008: $90K! Thats a 125% increase in sales! Screw 2008 economics
became a videogame reviewer
expanded current anime items on hand from $2000 to $12000 making my store the largest storage of anime figures this side of NY!
Got on BusinessWeek's front page a few times
CAS traffic maxes out at about 170,000 rank on alexa.com...that's about 2000 people a day. Not amazing but not too bad.
Qualified for a Google Adsense check for the first time.
Became a BusinessWeek columnist
turned my day-job into a two day a week p/t (almost a no time ^^;) thus making me a full time anime blogger and store owner!
See! 2008 didn't suck for everyone. Us otaku don't follow the norm and while everyone was crying we just stayed in our own anime-loving world doing what we like.
I really want to thank all the fans of the site and all my customers for making 2008 a wonderful year. 2009 will be even better. I do plan on doing at least one anime con appearance and with my store, I should once again get professional passes to SDCC . It's one heck of a trip from NY but it would be great to first see it in person.
Hi everyone. Sorry for the lack of updates. This holiday season has been a big rush for me. The anime figure biz has been doing great, so great that I have been so busy boxing items even after x-mas has passed. I had as much as 30 items that had to go out in one day @_@. There is a bunch of good things along the way so hopefully I can fill you in on that.
The weekly Idol post (that I just started) will continue next week. I want to put more effort in the posts instead of just placing pics. There is going to be a reason for to lower the "ero" factor for the next few days. The site's hits have been on the rise and as of last week, surpassed the top traffic I had in the summer. In the next month I should be below a 200,000 Alexa rank but that's not the half of it. As soon as today, the site should suddenly get a huge spike in hits. If the site should stay up (and my bandwidth bill should still be ok ^^;). Why this is will be reveiled in good time. Use the twitter updates and charlesgaffney.com as hints.
The countdown has begun. I did it. After years of claiming one day I will, after years of doing a network marketing company (hence why between 2004 and 2007 I was absent) and now the almost two years of running the anime business, I've finally put my two weeks (more like week and a half) resignation into my job. I was originally claiming that I was doing this before my 25th Birthday in November but, due to being offered health insurance, I stayed. This past Friday, the second week of working mostly from home, the stress my job gave me along with the back-lashing because I was home finally made me throw in the towel. On Dec. 24th 2008, the one year anniversary of Danielle and I's engagement, I will no longer be an employee. From that day on (as long as things go well of course) I will be working this site, anime.fm, charlesgaffney.com (BuisnessWeek connections) and the figure biz full time. My "title" will be a full time Otaku, writer, blogger and Anime Store Owner. Gone are the time cards, the morning commute, the pointless belittling that occurs in all jobs. As long as things go well, I will finally, finally own my life and Danielle will soon also do the same (no more Bob's Stores!).
The economy sure is scary right now. Lots of lay-offs are happening. Loads of people won't have a home or a job to go to, while you have me, a 25 year old otaku, a Computer Science semi-grad who is telling the corporate world "please take my job, for I don't want it."
I'm trying to prove my mantra as true. The truth that you can run your own life by following your dreams and doing what you love. Too many times I've seen people toss their dreams for a so-called "good job." When the schooling for that job, the boot licking and the stress caused by this job along with the inevitable layoff has done nothing but hurt you and your future. Chances are you don't want to do what you do and it's the very thing that causes us all to age and die from the inside out. If it wasn't for the Internet, yes, getting a good job would still be a good deal since starting a business would be that much more harder to do. Times have changed though society, schools and even our parents won't think that is so. While jobs fall everywhere, these pillars of our life will think it is still in our best interest to spend tens of thousands of dollars in college when, truthfully, if you don't have the scholarships and you have something like a business, a possible music, writing or art career, that that path would actually be the better route to take and more fulfilling to your being. Here's part of my letter to my boss:
"...I've made myself seem like I'm just some lowly worker who just follows orders like a child but despite the childish behavior that constantly comes from the unneeded, frantic panic at work; I've always just took it and did what needed to be done. I have been grateful for the chance you gave me to work from home and the other help you have given me when things were down but since my being at home seems to offend others and I must be a babysitter of some sorts, I'll come in next week and the week after during the normal times and even on Tuesday the week of Christmas but Christmas Eve will be my last day or any time sooner if you see fit."
I want to thank all my current and future fans/customers for helping me do this and I will bring back contests and other cool stuff as this site and the internet in general progresses.
Hey, and I think its pretty cool to be a "full time otaku." So enough of the deep talk. Time to celebrate ^_^. Below is the video I always wanted to show as my victory dance...
With the extra time I've had, I've been able to do a few new updates to the site. Some of you may know that google's Friend Connect just came out. I wasted no time in getting some of the features here on the site. Now you can "login" to my site! If you have a google, yahoo, orkut or an Open ID, you should be able to keep all your info for this and many other sites. Other changes have been made and now that I work only 2 days a week at my job, expect more to come. Here's a list of what's new:
Sign in or join Chuck's Anime Shrine by using the login to the right
Gone is the semi-new, now old "Otaku Blurbs"; been replaced by the new Friend Connect Wall engine. It allows replys and links to youtube videos. Give it a try ^_^
Cleaned the blog page a bit
Upgraded the home page as well with better navigation to different sections of the site.
After many hours of work, I finally got the anime pre-orders up in the store. As I stated before I had about $10K worth of figures on hand and about $40-$50K pending in pre-order from my suppliers from the land of the raising sun. I think this should put the nails on the coffin of ever working a job again. I just work my day job 2 days a week now and the time has come for me to turn this site into the otaku hub I wanted it to be since I was in the 12th grade back in 2002. I still have a bunch of "look and feel" upgrades I have to do for the store and here but the bulk of the work that was in my path is now done. If you do chose to do any pre-orders, do the "money order" option at checkout and you'll be invoiced via Paypal when the figure(s) arrive. If you chose to complete the Paypal payment, you will be charged but those who do this get top priority.
Just email the main store email here with a list of what you want if you don't want to do the checkout thing (I'll try to fix the bug or make it an easier process in the future).
As you can see above, one of the figures coming in the next few months is the super awesome Haruhi Suzumiya Extravaganza Ver. 1/8 Scale Figure by Max Factory. So far just Harhui is available to me but I would assume soon the Yuki and Mikuru Extravaganza figures will be up.
After adding a bunch of anime figures, it seems that of the three store fronts I have, Amazon is the easiest to list with my main store coming in second and ebay last. For your anime figure viewing pleasure, I've added an Amazon product widget to the blog (check the lower right hand side) that links to the figures and games that are in my store.
Now, if you want to order from me, the links won't go directly to my store (yet); they actually go to me and my competitors ^^;; To find what I'm selling the same items for, just browse through the list of sellers on the amazon product page and find "chucks-anime-shrine". I'll admit, I might not be selling the figures at the lowest price but I do my best. My Amazon profile is not as strong as my perfect eBay Powerseller rating but its me.
As of a few days ago I put my anime business revenue to good use by upgrading my work station here at home. I upgraded to a nice 19" LCD monitor, got a new video card and I kept my old monitor for the duel monitor setup. I'm loving it it and though I wish I got more done, with my job only going to be about two full days a week, the day has come for most of my efforts for here and my anime store plus the continuation of my artwork, Flash animations and games, anime.fm, my personal blog, contests and many more. Damn job has been such a pain so I do hope I can fire my boss once and for all soon. Loving being able to work from home and hence this new setup.
The figures up on top of my desk are (from left to right) Needa, Kotobukiya Tifa, Mirei-san and Yuffie by Kotobukia. On the shelf you can see Figma Mikuru and a few other small figures.
Next I need a wiredless mouse (again, my last one broke) , an oppai mouse pad and I should use my regular camera for these types of pics...not my iPhone.
Looks like as of a few days ago the site finally reached the 250,000 hit landmark. Nothing too special nowadays but a cool landmark nonetheless. The site has been around since March of 2002, and I've been tracking the hits since 2003 so its had some time to reach this mark. I can say though that the past 100K hits has happened faster than the first 150K. Anyways, just want to thank the fans of this site for all the page views and here's to much, much more in the coming year and years to come ^_^
Good news! Looks like the error was fixed and I don't see the store being falsely marked as an "attack site". It was definitely not a message I wanted to see right as I'm about to start redoing figure posts with links to the store and when 40 or so items got sold in the store at the same time @_@.
Hey everyone. Just when I thought things were back in gear, this had to hit me. Here's the story, over a few months back there was a hack into the site. It busted the old forum and thus screwed up all the old posts on there. Since then I made the new forum (which is more dead than the old one ~_~;;) Also, at that same time, the same random java code was in many of the .php pages of the store. If any of you are customers of the store or plan to be, no worries at all since this was just apparently a weird counter tool from a stupid site called statun .com. None of your information was taken at all since I use Paypal for payments. Only if Paypal ever gets hacked would there be any need to worry.
As of today, there must have been something still there in the store and of course google had to catch it and mistake the store as an "attack site" In the mean time you can always use the amazon and ebay branches of my store or do special orders by requesting items from either aaaanime.com or yesanime.com. Again, nothing to be worried about...just a big annoyance and I'll be added an SSL certificate to the store pages, just for extra protection...though again all payment info is on Paypal so, it'll be like putting a bullet proof vest on top of armor.
Once this issue is fixed, you should soon see more anime figure posts with links to pre-order or order them. Now excuse me while I burn down statun.com ~_~;;;;;
Hey everyone. So sorry for the gap in blog posts. I had a vehicular situation that turned out to be a big blessing in disguise. I didn't get into an accident or anything. My good old 1995 Buick Regal acted up on me again. The car is my very first car ever that I got back in 2002. Need to say, the old girl has 228K miles on it and her fuel pump decided to go after I drove to work 33 miles from my house. I had to do the train thing again and go without a car...which sucks for anyone who's been in a similar situation. I lucked out thanks to my father and what would have been a $700 fix was just $400.
So why is this a blessing? Well, this wasn't the first time this happened and it gave me fuel to ask my job for less commute time. As you guys know, I was going to quit my job due to the success of the anime store but my boss was uncommonly nice by giving me medical and now due to my dying car, I'm working from home most of the week! That's right, only Monday and Wednesday do I go into my job. The other days in the week I still work on my job's projects but from the comfort of the anime base itself...my room.
What's even weirder about this was that I was suppose to start this new schedule next week. I instead started it yesterday because the phone and internet systems at my job have been down until a few hours ago. I hope my timing doesn't make it seem like I had anything to do with it ^^;;.
I of course will do my job projects first since I've been rather grateful of the opportunity to be more at home. The additional time gained from not having to commute 33 miles one way most of the week will give me more time for here and the biz so to pay for Danielle and I's house and wedding. The economy is bad now but we seem to be on the winning side, which is not very crowded as of now. This brings my question for you guys;
Do you think you'd get more work done at home or at the office?
This is a few months late but I just had to write about this. After reading Sanjo-chan's blog on it I had to put in my two-cents. Many of you otaku know that Toonami stopped airing in late September. Many of us can thank Toonami for turing us into otaku. I started right at the very beginning in 1997 and I've seen up until about a year or two ago when Toonami only had Naruto as their only anime.
When I stated in the past that it was Final Fantasy VII that helped me become an otaku after years of just being a gamer, that was just half the story. I am still upset of the downfall of Toonami and anime in general on Cartoon Netwoork so I feel I have to let you know my story and where I'm going as an otaku because I might have a hand in what is to come. If you'd care to read on, here's my story:
Back in 1997, which was now 11 years ago, I was in the 7th grade. (Yeah, I turned 25 as of last Saturday so I'm an older otaku). Back then my days were basically that of playing baseball, hockey and football watching the New York Ranger's hockey and playing lots of video games after school. In September of 1996, Pokemon came to the US and I would watch it every morning at around 6am. I watched it not because I was an anime fan but because I was a fan of the game, which BTW still holds my record consecutive play time of 13 hours. Yes, I one day played Pokemon Blue for 13 hours straight. Sure wish I could have that kind of free time now. Anyways, anime's height in America at the time was the rare showings on Sci-fi channel and the occational Miyasaki runs on pay-per-view (Princess Mononoke to be exact). Finding anime was tough here at the time and as both a jock and a gamer, anime wasn't something I really knew of.
The popularity of Pokemon woke up the execs of Cartoon Network and thus Toonami months later came to be with its first host, Moltar from Space Ghost Coast To Coast; Cartoon Network's only in-house production at the time (more on those in a bit). During the spring of that year I was introduced to Final Fantasy VII by my long time friend, Tiago Barros. He had a Playstation and I was just a Nintendo boy so I went to his house often to fight him in Dragon Ball GT Final Bout, Bust-A-Move and of course watch him play FFVII. He would tend to leave mid game to watch Sailor Moon and Dragon Ball Z on Toonami. I didn't know what the appeal was and I just played the games while he watched. Shortly, I began to watch Toonami with him and with my love for Tifa in FFVII, I was all over the internet (aka the World Wide Web at the time) looking for more info and getting into Toonami and anime. It was then I became an otaku. I of course went beyond Toonami in terms of series to watch since not all anime was shown on there, but it was Toonami that got me into it in the first place (along with FFVII).
Fast forward to 2001-2002, I was in the 12th grade and I was in Miss. Beris' Web design class in New Field High School, mainly to kill time. A project was due to create a full working website and thus this site, Chuck's Anime Shrine, was born. Thanks to Newgrounds.com, in which alot of the design ideas came from, my site became popular with otaku since it was one of the few places pre-You-Tube to have AMV videos to view. Because of this site and my anime fandom, I met Danielle who is now my fiancee and turned this site into a business that is on a roll. Sales will be double of last years, very close to $100K and as of last month, my profits matched my job's income...even when I only listed and sold a fifth of the items I have on hand and not even a tenth of items on the way. I can safely say that my job is now completely expendable and my originally failed plan to escape the 9-5 rut is only a few months away or less.
As you see I owe a bunch to Toonami and have lots to be upset for them being gone, but here's the surprise you get for reading through this very large blog post; I'm going to use my newly gained anime presence to try to bring back something like Toonami or Toonami itself. Remember my good friend Tiago who I thank dearfully for converting me into an otaku? Well, for the past 5 years he's actually been working in Atlanta with Adult Swim and more recently with Cartoon Network headquarters. Toonami's death and anime's slowdown on Cartoon Network can be blamed for Adult Swim's transformation to Cartoon Network First Party Only shows but once I'm freed from the chains of a 9-5 job, I'll make this one of my big goals. So, Tiago, if you are reading this, I'll be in touch with you soon on some things.
Anime.fm is a site I recently aquired that even got the attention of our favorite blogger, Danny Choo and if you are reading Danny, turning Anime.fm into what Toonami was would be a great idea for us on it if you still want to work with me on it ^_~. Let's also not forget that I'll be training to be an anime voice actor along with making video games for Flash, X-box 360 and Apple iPhone so very soon my dream of being a force in the anime/game industry will be a reality. In other words, I have connection in the right spots.
Hope you guys like the new look of the site and the lack of updates was because of the huge number of anime orders I had to deal with so check up on my updates as they will be more frequent again. Though I didn't quit Berger-Bros like I wanted to a few weeks ago, the time is soon and with all that is in front of me now, my days an a meager employee are almost done. Below is the final broadcast of Toonami but I'm using this blog post to let you all know that anime won't die if I have something to do about it, since I might be in the coming months.
(Also, don't forget that Toonami still lives on with its Jetstream website)
As you can see by looking at my posts, I was able to finally embed the comments. This was thanks to a some-what new update via Blogger and big thanks goes to bloggerbuster for the code that I needed since my blog is rather custom and needed some tweaking. for anyone who is running into the problem of getting the comments embedded, use that code on bloggerbuster and place it where your comments code is in your template. The code that you have to replace doesn't have to be the exact one they mention, just place it in your comment area and test it to see if it works. Next Blogger coding hurtle...Related Posts.
(note: picture featured is not mine, I modified it via Photoshop but I might use it for other technical fixes and additions)
After a long weekend and a rather buggy computer slowing me down, I'd like to introduce you to Chuck's Anime Shrine version 4.0. Now the completed product is still in the works but I'm sure you have noticed the difference here. Here's a list of what is new, what is gone and what's on the way:
New: -Recreated the whole look of the site to look like... well, a shrine!
-random backgrounds at the top (6 for now)
-a smaller blog address (thanks to redirects)...but the working url is still the same; new blog link shortcut: chucksanimeshrine.com/blog.html
-twitter : you get to see my twitter status, of course I do what you all to do tweets from here as well in the future
-addthis.com button: a simple button for adding posts to a large amount of news, blog sites
-fewer ads
-less cluttered blog
-broader page size
-MobileMe embedded gallery
-Fanart gallery that you can submit your work to
-an idol section; yes, you can now view japanese idols here as well
-anime figure gallery
-anime music section; the same system I have on anime.fm
-all older sections of the site are in the sitemap for now but will soon be integrated - "Non-series" pictures are all now part of the anime gallery with new pictures -all old fanart items will be added soon
On the way:
-If you are viewing this from the home page, I promise it will look nicer and will be more useful than just a text copy of the blog
-more contests: submit your fan-art to the new fan-art section because the best ones will be selected in the next contest and hopefully future ones as well
-more picture submission albums in the gallery
-all the anime series I currently have (not many) will have all their pictures in the gallery soon
-More anime series sections and pictures
-a better amv section, if possible
-this site to appear in Otaku USA (for the store mainly)
Well, there you have it. Version 4.0 is not a 100% but now the stage is set for a more functional site and more content for me to easily add and you all as well. Now I'm off to watch some uncut season one DBZ, I'm beat @_@.
