Otaku Links: One thing leads to another

Otaku Links

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  • When I first heard about the so-called “cosplay lawsuit,” I thought it was overblown. It’s about cheerleader uniforms, not costumes! However, here and here are two great articles that showed me just how likely the current suit is to have an effect on cosplay. HT Zoe!
  • Confessional articles are a huge blogging trend, so I guess it was only a matter of time before news sites industrialized them. Gawker found out that women’s site Bustle gives new writers an extremely personal survey to better help them share their most intimate stories online.
  • Christian anime blog Beneath the Tangles has a new logo. I love hearing about how other bloggers work behind the scenes, and I especially love the thought they put into the process.
  • Is it because I’m an American that I love United Kingdom accents so much? All I know is, this Tatami Galaxy Irish fandub is incredible. Ozu is basically a leprechaun anyway.

Screenshot via Tatami Galaxy

How to request free anime review copies for your blog

Anime, Journalism

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This topic comes from a frequently asked question, because who doesn’t like scoring free stuff? But getting free anime review copies is about more than the nonexistent price tag. It’s validation from publishers that your opinion matters, that your review will be influential enough to drive demand.

A fair amount of my 2015 book, Build Your Anime Blog, goes into how I—and some of the bloggers behind twelve stand-out blogs—get review copies. Of course this post isn’t going to be as thorough as a 170-page book, but here are some pointers on getting started.

Stay professional

Before you even reach out to an industry member, you’re already setting up your reputation with your blog, so keep it professional. Your anime blog is your public face. It’s I don’t mean you need to stop writing about fan service or hentai—in fact, I would love to see more thoughtful writing on those subjects—but that you need to show that you take your anime blog seriously.

Have a clean, easy-to-read blog theme, with black text on a white background. Maintain a regular update schedule. Indicate the reviews you’ve already written (of shows you already own or have bought or streamed yourself) with an easy-to-find archive section. Have a visible email address, in case just browsing your impeccable site is enough to convince a visiting anime industry member to want to contact you. Your blog is where the review is going to appear, and you want to indicate that it’s a pretty great place for people to read reviews.

Reach out

People don’t realize how easy it is to contact anime industry professionals. When you look at the press release page for Funimation, or Viz Media, or anywhere else, you can find the press person’s contact at the bottom of any press release.

When you do this outreach, be clear and brief. Indicate that you’re a blogger who has published X, Y, and Z reviews, and list your traffic numbers for those reviews if you think they’re particularly impressive. (If not, just leave them out.) Then, ask to get onto their review copy list. If they accept, show your gratitude with a thank you email. If they decline, don’t take it personally. You don’t know what factored into their decision—it could be that they don’t have the finances to send people review copies right now, nothing to do with you.

Follow up

One thing you might not have considered is that if you are on a review list, you might receive anime releases that aren’t quite up your alley. But this whole post is about indicating your professionalism and dedication: review those free copies anyway!

“Here’s the pro tip to anime blogging,” Evan of Ani-gamers told me in his Build Your Anime Blog review, “Whenever you review something, send a courtesy email to the publisher.” Publishers are aware that they’re taking a gamble when they send review copies. The blogger might delay a long time to review it, or not review it at all. Showing that you took the time to actually review, and to share that review with the publisher, speaks volumes, and will strongly influence your ongoing professional relationship with them for the better.

Don’t forget to disclose!

In the United States, the Federal Trade Commission regulates “truth in advertising” and these rules extend online as well. When you review or endorse a product on your blog, you are required by law to disclose if that product was given to you for free. The FTC considers such endorsements as advertisements and, in the United States, bloggers have been obligated to make these disclosures since 2006. Always make it known that you received a free review copy of a show. It’s not just transparent to your readers, it’s also your legal obligation.

If you want to know more about my own professional relationships with industry professionals, well, that’s in Build Your Anime Blog where I get more personal. But when you’re starting out, I consider these four pointers to be the most important things you need to know.

Is reviewing free anime copies a personal goal of yours? How do you plan to achieve it?

Photo by Jill Ferry

See also:

Want to write a helpful anime review? Answer these 7 questions first.

How to get paid to watch anime

Otaku Links: Long Weekend

Otaku Links

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  • ATTENTION COSPLAYERS: As many of you know, my book Cosplay: The Fantasy World of Role Play was written in seven weeks and didn’t give me a lot of time to contact every single person featured (though of course, all photographers were contacted and compensated). The book has sold enough to merit a second edition, so I can start correcting that. Reach out to me if you would like to be credited in a different way!
  • What a weekend! In the midst of a major blizzard, I managed to launch my new Gunpla 101 T-shirt line on time. The designs are by the person who designed the Otaku Journalist logo, Ben Huber.
  • I also got my Japanese Language Proficiency Test N5 score, after refreshing the page for about 40 minutes. I passed! My score wasn’t great, but after checking out the year by year statistics of how many people pass and fail, I’m coming to terms with that.
  • In this lackluster winter season, my new hobby is watching old anime. Last week I finished Ristorante Paradiso; this week I marathoned Time of Eve, the story of a high school boy who discovers his family’s android visiting a strange cafe, seemingly on her own. It’s so good, and so short! You can watch all six, short episodes in just a few hours.

What are you reading on the Internet this week? Don’t forget you can always submit links to me to include in next week’s Otaku Links!

How to encourage clicks on your niche affiliate blog

Journalism, Writing

clicks

Welcome to the final Monday post of the month, and the conclusion of our affiliate blogging experiment. I know this has been a bit of an unusual direction for Otaku Journalist, and thank you so much for sticking with me this whole time. One of my most important goals with this blog is to help people make a living writing about the things they are most passionate about, and for me this is one of the most independent ways to pursue that goal.

Anyway, let’s take a look at the numbers! Last week I hypothesized that STEM Toys For Girls would not make any money yet and…

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Unfortunately, I was right. Looking at the orders report, you can see that while there were 13 different clicks on the site (and 5 on products), nobody bought anything.

The way it works is that when somebody visits your affiliate site and clicks on a product link, Amazon assigns a cookie to their Amazon account for 24 hours. If they buy anything within the following 24 hours, you make a commission on it. In this case, out of the very few people who visited the site, nobody bought anything within that time period.

Here’s an example of a healthier conversion rate, taken from another of my affiliate sites:

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Notice that even with 9,000 clicks, my conversion rate is still just 4 percent here. Not everybody who visits your site is in the mood to shop, so obviously, your chances of making money this way significantly increase the more clicks and traffic you get.

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In the Orders Report, I can check out what people are clicking on. With a data sample this small, it’s not really worth analyzing which products are resonating with people.

In the interest of full disclosure, not a single affiliate site I have ever created has made money in its first month. That’s probably because I don’t use any tactics to escalate traffic early on. Instead, I slowly add more and more content to my blog until it becomes a top search result.

That’s why I so strongly emphasized testing your topic in Google Keyword Planner. You want to make sure it’s something low competition enough that your site will be able to appear on the first page of search results for that topic early on.

There are a lot of below-board techniques for speeding up your income rate, none of which I recommend. Instead, here’s what I’ll be doing to increase traffic to my site, and therefore encourage more clicks to my affiliate links:

  • Increase its amount of valuable content. You may have noticed that there are only three pages on this site, same as last week. (I got busy, OK?) A site that small doesn’t exactly encourage you to browse around for a while. If I want to increase my chance of showing up in searches—and retaining visitors who do find it—I should add more posts. And of course, these posts should be helpful and informative, not spammy.
  • Share my site in relevant spaces. I could post in forums for parents and educators interested in STEM toys. I could leave comments on other STEM related blogs, and include a link to my own site when it’s helpful. While we often think of it as annoying to share our blogs with strangers, there are places where people would not only not be irritated, but actually enjoy the fact that we shared.
  • Live my life. There’s always a chance that, even after putting in a lot more work, this blog won’t be a moneymaker. So I’m not going to obsess over it. In order to make sure the time I put in is productive, I won’t check my Amazon Affiliate stats daily, only on the days after I post an update. The point of so-called passive income is that you put in a lot of work up front and then put it on the backburner, so eventually I’ll do that.

Right now, I’m putting the finishing touches on the affiliate marketing guide I mentioned at the beginning of this series. When it’s for sale in February, my readers will be the first to know.

Thanks for reading, and I hope you found this short blog-along helpful!

Previously:

How to design and launch your niche affiliate blog

Choosing keywords and content types for your affiliate blog

Finding a topic for your niche blog

Photo credit: Matthias Ripp

Otaku Links: Making Anime Great Again

Otaku Links

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We’re in the midst of a blizzard here in DC so Otaku Links is up a little late as I do things like buy groceries and find the flashlight batteries. There’s no chance I’ll be going outside all weekend, so I’m hunkered down with some Gunpla models and Ristorante Paradiso, which is apparently named after me. In the meantime I’m launching a t-shirt line and wrapping up the affiliate blog series. See you Monday!

  • Buying DVDs is far from the only way to support the anime industry. According to the Japan Times, online streaming has become a major revenue stream for anime studios. (HT Steve!)
  • What’s up with the smiley new Funimation logo? Justin at Organization Anti-Social Geniuses talked to the company about what into the redesign process.
  • At Anime News Network, myself and the other reviewers all answered the question: Which Anime Made You Cry? Don’t read mine unless you’ve already watched Silver Spoon.

Photo by Danny Choo