Pledge Break

Published January 25, 2005

By C. W. Oberleitner

The time has come, the walrus said, to speak of many things. Instead of cabbages and kings, in a letter to readers, o-meon.com editor C. W. Oberleitner talks about the success the site has enjoyed thus far, and the challenges that lie ahead.

Thank You

I want to begin by thanking everyone who has helped to make o-meon.com possible, and that's a pretty long list—and it's getting longer every day.

I know my name is the one that that, up till now, you've seen heading up virtually every article on the site. I am by no means, however, the only person contributing to the stories you've seen posted here each week.

My editor is Pat Holtz; he's the one that encourages my use of commas (among other things!—his editor). Dixon Ticonderoga and A. B. Line, both of whom prefer to be known only by these pseudonyms, have proven to be invaluable when it comes to tracking down the true inside story of the inner workings of the entertainment industry.

Ken Larsen, of The Write Ability, has ably assisted our Webmaster, Rufus T. Firefly, who freely admits he barely knows enough about HTML to get our pages up. Ken also provides assistance and feedback to Pat Holtz. Bruce Harris, of WORDS 5, has helped keep us focused on our objectives, and John Lohr has been a remarkable source of support and an excellent sounding board.

When discussing the Web, the word "community" is one that gets bandied about quite a bit. Community, however, truly describes the feeling I get when talking about the overwhelmingly positive response o-meon.com has received from the webmasters of other news and information websites. Here are just a few, in alphabetical order, that have regularly linked to our stories:

· Animated-News.com

· AnimationNation.com

· BigAnimation.com (aka Skwigly Online Animation Magazine)

· JimHillMedia.com

· LaughingPlace.com

· ScreamScape.com

My biggest thanks has to go to you, our readers, who have helped make o-meon.com one of the fastest growing pop-culture news and information sites on the World Wide Web. In just a three short months, we've gone from a standing start to serving nearly five thousand unique visits per month and tens of thousands of hits. And each month's traffic on the site has exceeded the previous month's traffic.

A very special thank you to those of you who have taken the time to use one of our links to the iTunes Music Store to make a purchase, clicked on one of the Google Ads, or made a direct donation to the site. Your contributions are greatly appreciated!

Send This Boy to Camp

One of the questions I'm most often asked is, "Do you make any real money off those ads on your site?" By real, the questioner usually means are we making a profit. They're quite often surprised to learn that not only are we not making a profit but also, after just barely three months in the business, our revenues don't even begin to cover our expenses.

In addition to the fixed expenses for things like our Internet Service Provider (ISP), DSL, and cellular and land phone lines, we have occasional "special event" expenses.

Two such events are just about upon us.

On January 30, ASIFA Hollywood will host the 32^nd annual Annie Awards at the Alex Theatre in Glendale, California. Because this event is not televised and, judging by your inquires, is of great interest to many of our readers, I plan on covering this event for the site. The Annies, like the Academy Awards, are a formal affair, and I don't even own a tux!

Then there is this year's Walt Disney Company shareholders' meeting, which will be held in sunny Minneapolis, Minnesota just a few days after the Annies on February 11. I do have warm, cold-weather gear; however, there's still the matter of getting to Minneapolis and back, plus a two-night hotel stay.

All of which brings me to this: a request for your help.

While doing very well for such a relatively new site, our volume of traffic is currently only strong enough to support entry into the most basic Internet affiliate ad programs. The relatively small commissions from these basic programs, while nice to have, only make up a tiny fraction of our monthly operating expenses. We need your help.

We are (and by we, I mean all the folks I mentioned above who have given so freely of their time and, yes, even capital) asking those of you who regularly visit o-meon.com and have not yet made a donation to click on the donate button at the left and kick in a few bucks.

To make it easier to understand how your donations will be put to work, try and picture this: Imagine, if you will, a bearded, balding, over weight, middle-aged man standing before you in a pair of black socks and stripped boxer shorts and nothing else. That would be me as I'm getting ready to head out the door for the Alex theatre in Glendale to cover the Annie awards.

Do you really want to subject Jeffrey Katzenberg, Roy Disney, Brad Bird, and the rest of the Annie's audience to a sight like that? Good golly, Miss Molly, I would certainly hope not!

If you've been informed or entertained by any of the stories you've read here on o-meon.com, we hope you'll take a minute, click the donate button, and make a contribution to our continuing effort to bring you these types of stories.

Judging by your emails, many of you work inside the entertainment industry and regularly visit o-meon.com to keep up with what's going on inside your industry. We've put a lot of our own capital into things like admissions, meals, and tips for your fellow employees. Won't you take a minute, click the donate button, and make a contribution to our continuing effort to keep you up to date on what's going on inside your industry?

It has been our pleasure to serve you these past few months. On behalf of everyone here at o-meon.com, I want to say thank you once again for supporting our site. We're all looking forward to bringing you even more stories from the world capital of entertainment.

Sincerely,

C. W. "Chuck" Oberleitner
Editor and Publisher
o-meon.com

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