Anime Herald Fiscal Report for Year Ending 3/31/2024

Introduction

As part of our efforts to maintain full transparency within our organization, it’s decided that every year, the chief officer of Anime Herald must compile an annual financial report within 8 weeks of the end of the fiscal year. This document will serve to outline our finances, as well as our performance over the year.

For reporting purposes, our fiscal year runs from April 1, 2023, through Mar 31, 2024. However, following a conversation with our accountant, we are modifying our fiscal year. Going forward, our fiscal years will run from January through December, to align with Rhode Island’s fiscal calendars. Therefore, our next annual report will be in January 2025.

Current Finances

March 31, 2023, we have $2,444.34 in our checking account. Of this, $400 is set aside for articles that have been commissioned, and $400 is set aside for editors to work on these articles. $80 is set aside for columns, which I work on personally and have no editorial cost attached.

Income

In our fiscal year, Anime Herald posted $4,548.67 in revenues. The breakdown is as follows:

• Patreon: 4,003.29

• Ko-fi: 512.00

• Interes: 33.38

• Teepublic (Merchandise): 0

Our current largest driver is Patreon, which accounted for an average monthly revenue of $333.61, after fees and taxes.

The primary driver of costs came from invoices. This category includes payments to writers and editors for articles, in addition to the Editor-In-Chief for a monthly $50 salary.

Until we break even, the Editor-in-Chief will remain a salaried employee who does not invoice for editorial or written work. As such, features like Anime Herald’s Anime Boston coverage, and editing for many articles written by Anime Herald team members incurred zero costs.

Expenses

For the fiscal year, Anime Herald posted $5,710.66 in operating costs, which were paid out primarily via the Anime Herald bank account.

Invoices

Invoices continue to remain our largest cost year-over-year. This category includes payments to writers and editors for articles, columns, and the Editor-in-Chief’s monthly salary.

For the fiscal year, we posted $3,705 in invoice payments. We attribute the increase to three particular cases:

• Samantha collected her salary for several months of the year

• The introduction of columns, which have a $20 - $25 payout, depending on length.

• We pay a bounty on “patron request” articles, to ensure that skilled writers handle them, be it Anime Herald team members, or writers that are regular contributors that we trust with the source material. This is a 50% bounty, bringing the price of the article to $75.

Infrastructure

This year, Anime Herald paid $823.29 in Infrastructure costs. This includes our web hosting, domain names, and services required to operate in a modern environment, such as backups and server management. 

The breakdown for these costs is as follows:

• Web hosting: $479.95

• Web Domains: $44.34

• Server Management Service (Runcloud): $150.00

• Backup Provider: $149.00

Taxes and Fees

To do business in Rhode Island, there is a fixed cost of $400, paid directly to the state. To help ensure that we remain in compliance with all regulations, the organization employs a Registered Agent ($125/year).

In total, we paid $525 in taxes and fees related to doing business in the state of Rhode Island. As such, we remain in good standing with the state.

These fees were paid using Chief Officer Samantha Ferreira’s funds.

Tooling

Anime Herald uses three paid tools: Yoast SEO, EWWW Image Optimizer (CDN), and Google Workspaces (Email, documents, and storage).

As such, our tooling costs for the fiscal year were as follows:

• Google Workspaces: $632.36

• EWWW.io Image Optimizing Service: $84.96

• Yoast SEO Premium: $95.34

In total, we paid $812.66 for tooling.

Of these, Google Workspaces fees were paid using Anime Herald’s accounts, while EWWW and Yoast were funded using chief officer Samantha Ferreira’s funds.

Miscellaneous Expenses

Anime Herald, LLC recorded two major “miscellaneous” expenses over the year, related to the collection of payments from Ko-fi. We paid $20.80 to Stripe, and $6.26 to Paypal to handle transactions from our payment partners. In total, we paid $27.06 in fees this year.

In response to our June 2023 pledge drive, Samantha made a $182.33 donation to the Trevor Project. However, as this does not affect our bottom line, we are not including it in our total.

Likewise, this fiscal year saw Samantha pay $12,500 in rebranding and design costs to Hand Designed Co., for our new branding and website design. As Samantha is paying for this out of pocket, we are not including it in our total. Rather, we are reporting on the total for full transparency purposes.

Two more payments, totaling $2,000, will appear in our next quarterly report, to close off the payment process.

Totals

For the fiscal year, Anime Herald, LLC saw $5,710.66 in total costs. Against earnings of $4,548.67, the company posted a deficit of $1,161.99 for the year. This is an adjusted monthly shortfall of $96.83 per month. 

To break even, we must raise $475 per month, after fees and taxes are deducted by Patreon and our payment partners. As such, we are keeping our current break-even goal at $500, which will afford us $25 per month as a buffer.

Challenges

At the moment, earning funds through merchandise remains a challenge, as it requires a buy-in of artwork, in addition to graphic design work to properly composite. Furthermore, Teepublic’s low fees remain a major deterrent. Because of this, we are currently looking for a new sales partner.

While we still see merchandise as a viable and inherently valuable avenue, we will evaluate how we want to handle this in the coming months.

Otherwise, our largest challenge remains bringing in new subscribers, while providing satisfactory benefits for our existing members.

Plans for Fiscal 2024

Income

Anime Herald is continuing to evaluate all avenues for revenues that do not include the following:

• Banner Advertisements

• Sponsored Articles

We remain committed to ensuring that Anime Herald remains an online magazine that does not require the use of an ad blocker to have an ideal reading experience. Likewise, we refuse to entertain the idea of paywalls, as this can, and will, ultimately harm our readers and potential readers while damaging the trust that we’ve built with our community. Our editor-in-chief, Samantha Ferreira, stands behind our content and integrity and refuses to make moves that will endanger our reputation.

In June, Anime Herald will be hosting a subscription drive. We will announce details in mid-May, but the drive will tie into our annual tradition of Samantha donating to The Trevor Project on our behalf. We are an organization run by a transgender woman, with several LGBTQIA+ individuals on our team. Moreover, we work with many LGBTQIA+ writers. We’re proud of who we are, and this is our opportunity to give back to the community in a tangible way.

For June, we’ll be targeting a goal of $850 per month, which will allow us to do the following:

• Raise rates to $75 per article, $35 per column for editors and writers

• Allow us to add one long-form article or two short columns to the calendar each month

• Pay for all of our costs without having to go out-of-pocket.

It’s a high goal, but I know we can reach it.

Publication Updates

With the relaunch, we added weekly columns as a part of our publishing calendar. For these, Lauren Orsini and Borealis Capps have been producing shorter-form articles that have relatively few constraints as to the topics.

I’m pleased to say that these have been a success, in terms of bringing new readers to the publication, and we have seen their work appearing in prominent places such as Google’s “Discover” feed. We are excited to continue working with both Lauren and Borealis going forward.

That said, it is clear that the winds are changing, and that services like Google and Bing are succumbing to the rot economy that has followed their increased focus on Generative “AI”. We are currently exploring providers for a traditional email newsletter service, though this is in the early stages.

Conclusion

Though this year saw us fall short of our goals, we are incredibly close to our goal of breaking even consistently. Once we reach our goals, we will be able to look toward bringing in new articles for the site and, more importantly, raising the rates we pay our writing and editorial team. 

I want to offer my sincere thanks to all of you for your support and encouragement over the years. We wouldn’t be here without you, and we are all immensely grateful.

Our abbreviated quarterly report for Spring 2024 will be due by July 31, 2023.