We know these popular funny video and picture websites like CollegeHumor, I Am Bored, and eBaum’s World. We also know big video steaming sites like YouTube, Break, Metacafe, Dailymotion, Revver, and many more out there.

Anyways, I have been thinking about jumping into video sharing websites for past two years. I never did because I was too busy with finance job during the day and affiliate marketing every other minute I had. I knew video sites take lot of time to maintain and searching for new videos. So I put this off for past two years and I mostly focused on semi and full automated websites. However, I did ran into few “niche” video sharing sites I liked: UFC/Fight related sites, examples: WildKO and FightDump Both of these sites focus on Fight videos like UFC and Boxing. So we all hear “find a niche with less competition = easier profit” right? I thought about starting one of these fight video sites. Okay… I got another trigger of why I should get into video sharing sites. Just the other day browsing Sitepoint Marketplace, I found an interesting auction: Premium Anime Streaming site for sale.

Site info: AnimeThat.com brings in $3,000/month and over 950,000 unique visitors a month. Just two months old, asking minimum bid $17,000 and buy it now price of $27,000. Okay, stats are important but truth is many sellers hype it up to get maximum dollar amount possible. Make sure you check everything out before making a bid.

Main Page Ad Locations

Second Page Ad Locations

Finally 3rd page! Takes 3 page loads to get to viewing videos!

Congrats! Very well placed adsense ads. I like the site navigation, it takes visitors three page loads to finally get to watching videos. More page loads = more ads are seen = more chances these ads are clicked on, and more money generated from CPM ads. Anime video traffic is younger? They don’t know much about ads and very curious clicking around the site? No wonder this site owner earned ~$2,000 in adsense earnings. You gave me some ideas about adsense ad placements!

Doing some digging around, there was another Anime site on sale at Sitepoint: AnimeCrunch.com little more established than AnimeThat.com. Looks like we know where AnimeThat site owner got their inspiration from. However, there are tons of Anime video sites out there and another copied site? http://www.animegiant.com ? AnimeGiant started just a month ago from Whois Domain . So we are starting to see copycat sites??

By all mean, if you want to make money from Anime video site then go for it. Video sites are not automated so you have to take time to update links and go search for new anime videos. I wouldn’t buy AnimeThat.com for $17,000 price tag. Showing just over few months of traffic/earnings stats doesn’t justify this price tag when the site can be easily duplicated for far less price. Go start your own Anime video site.

If I had the money to invest in a website? I would definitely check out Crunchyroll.com

Crunchryroll Alexa graph compared to break.com, metacafe.com, and revver.com

August 29th, there was an article about Crunchyroll looking for investors. Covered on TechCrunch. Article also mentioned about copyrighted videos being displayed and uploaded. From what I’m gathering on crunchyroll.com, most moderators are volunteers, and running the site on their own time. Who cares about copyrighted videos??? YouTube didn’t worry much about copyrighted videos when they first started. You run video sites to get maximum traffic as possible, then worry about revenue, copyrighted materials, and other stuff later. Once your got enough traffic then think about taking it to next level and plan an exist strategy (buyout). Crunchyroll’s traffic growth saids lot about popularity of Anime industry over the internet. If I had the money, I would definitely invest in Crunchyroll. Growth is amazing! Could be next Youtube.

Filed under: Internet Entrepreneurs, Make Money Online