Anime Herald Financial Report For Fiscal Quarter 2, 2024 (Ending 9/30/2023)

Introduction

As part of our efforts to maintain full transparency within our operation, it has been decided that every quarter, the chief officer of Anime Herald, LLC must compile a quarterly report detailing our financial results.

This document outlines our organization’s finances, as well as an evaluation of our performance over Quarter 2 of our 2023 fiscal year, which ended on September 30, 2023.

Note: Unless stated otherwise, all values are in US Dollars

Current Finances

As of September 30, 2023, Anime Herald had $2,281.93 in reserve capital. Of this, $450 is reserved for articles commissioned, and $450 is reserved for our editors to work on them.

Income

For our most recent fiscal quarter, Anime Herald reported a total of $955.36 in total revenues. The breakdown is as follows:

• Patreon: $944.09
• Ko-fi: $3.00
• TeePublic: $0
• Interest: $8.27

Of these, our greatest source of revenue remains Patreon, which raises an average of $314.70 per month.

Expenses

Our primary drivers of cost this quarter remain invoices, costs related to network infrastructure, and tooling.

Invoices are composed of payments to writers and our editorial team for articles, as well as Samantha’s $50 monthly salary. This quarter, Samantha waived her salary in July and August, though she used her September payment toward the costs of the redesign. As such, this quarter, Anime Herald posted a total of $925 in invoice payments, which were paid out via the Anime Herald bank account.

Infrastructure costs this quarter, which include hosting for the Anime Herald website, as well as the “hera.fyi” subdomain, totaled $32.10 per month, or $96.30 for the quarter. Our costs were noticeably less this quarter, as our backup providers and server management team bill on an annual basis. This was not paid for using the Anime Herald bank account; rather, it was paid using chief officer Samantha Ferreira’s personal funds.

Furthermore, in August, we renewed the animeherald.com domain for two more years, which cost $44.34. This paid via the Anime Herald bank account.

In Quarter 2, Anime Herald paid a total of $149.12 for tooling, which was entirely associated with Google Workspaces. Like our infrastructure costs, this was paid for using Samantha Ferreira’s personal funds.

Miscellaneous Expenses

Anime Herald recorded two categories of “Miscellaneous” expenses this quarter. The first is a 52-cent surcharge on incoming PayPal payments, which totaled $1.56.

The second miscellaneous expense is related to Anime Herald’s ongoing redesign process. As was noted in our previous report, this does not affect Anime Herald’s bottom line. This is being paid for entirely by Samantha, and our reporting on costs related to this is for transparency purposes only.

With this in mind, the first of three payments for the redesign was made in September. This came to $5,000. Five more payments - one for $5,000 in November, and four for $1,000 each post-launch, are scheduled per our agreement.

Totals

For the second quarter of Fiscal 2024, Anime Herald, LLC saw $1,165.68 in total costs. Of these, $969.34 were paid for directly, using Anime Herald’s accounts. $196.34 was paid using Samantha’s personal funds

Against earnings of $955.36, Anime Herald recorded a total loss of $210.32, this is an adjusted monthly shortfall of $70.11.

To break even under our current quarterly parameters, Anime Herald must raise 388.56  per month after fees and taxes are deducted by Patreon. However, this also discounts our annual costs, which see increases in Quarter 1 and Quarter 3 of each year. Because of this, we are keeping our current break-even goal at $500, which will afford us $63.84 per month (according to our annual calculations) as a buffer.

Challenges

As of now, earning funds through merchandise remains a challenge, as it requires a combination of the following:

• Buy-in of artwork
• Graphic design work to properly composite
• Rendering of fees to Teepublic

Because of this, merchandise continues to be a blip on our radar. Still, it stands as a potentially valuable avenue for us.

As of today, Anime Herald has issued an official moratorium on new merchandise designs, as we are currently evaluating other options for sales and production. We will be taking more concrete steps in this direction once our rebranding process completes, and funds that have been associated with the redesign are freed up.