Anime OTK

[web-ed]

Some of you are probably familiar with Anime OTK, which features spankings of all kinds drawn by a large number of artists. We've seen several of their top people here at CSR such as Congolike, Cc, SP Anka, Arkham-Insanity, Spanking Femme-Fatale, and most recently, Last Transistor Hero. There's a lot of Anime and Role-Playing stuff there which basically doesn't mean too much to us older guys, but there are also occasional superhero spankings and scenes with original characters, so I check it out once per week. The site has been down for a month now, and in case anyone was wondering about it I thought I'd share some information and comments.

Frankly, I'm not surprised this happened because Ai, the owner, has been running on the ragged edge of disaster for years. His basic vulnerability was due to his own success: AOTK and several other sites he runs generate so much traffic that he needed to operate his own servers, which runs into some real money. I don't know how many visitors AOTK got in a typical month, but there were always at least 30 - 50 members online. By contrast, I've got about 25,000 unique visitors to CSR every month, which is excellent for a spanking site, but not so many that I need my own server (I use my web host provider's). So while as everyone knows, CSR loses money it's nothing like AOTK where the bills were running into hundreds of dollars per month more than Ai could possibly take in with advertising revenue. (There's very little money to be made in spanking, alas - my own attempt to defray CSR's expenses with a second, commercial site Central Spanking Warehouse hasn't worked out very well either).

Consequently, Ai made up the difference every month out of his own pocket while running periodic appeals for financial assistance. I donated myself before the economic collapse but have been out of work for three years, and now Ai is in the same boat himself: having lost his job, he couldn't afford to pay for his server any more, so the site is unavailable. With so many of us out of work (the true rate of unemployment here in the U.S. is probably double the official U-3 figure of 8.1%), I don't know where he's going to find the financial help he needs, especially going forward (anyone who wishes to help can visit this blog for more information). Still, as long as he holds on to the domain name, it's always possible that AOTK will return. Ai may simply have to reduce the scale of his operations. I hope in that event he chooses to give up one or more of his non-spanking sites instead of AOTK.

Now you know one of the reasons so many spankos start blogs instead of regular websites: they're cheaper! (They're also easier to manage technically, but that's another story). As for me and CSR, I've scraped up the cash to keep going for another year, by which time ... well, without getting too political, let's just say I'm hOping for some changes come Election Day !

[overbarrel49]

hi web-ed,

thanks for this post. i had no idea about all this and found your information interesting. thanks, phil

[web-ed]

AOTK is still down. I hope it comes back, but in case it doesn't, I want any of its resident artists to know there's a place for them here on CSR if they want it. I hope this isn't mistaken for some kind of vulture-like opportunism, because there's nothing in it for me personally except more work!

Any artist wishing to have his or her own subforum here simply needs to do the following:

1. Join the forum in the usual way, by registering.
2. When you send me your activation request, mention that you would like to have your own subforum. I'll take care of the rest.
3. Remember, there is one big restriction on CSR as opposed to AOTK: all spankees MUST BE ADULTS! (Child spankers are o.k.).

I don't enforce a X/F orientation rule, but if you're expecting positive feedback, you'd be well-advised to keep to these orientations. F/M and M/M don't go over very well here.

[web-ed]

AOTK came back up about a week ago. Someone apparently chipped in a good deal of money, and the claim is that the servers are paid up for at least for another 12 months. I remain skeptical about its long-term prospects, however - Ai is still asking for donations, which means that unless people come up with more money than they have in the past, or Ai himself is able to make up the difference between site costs and revenues, AOTK could go down again in late 2013. Of course, there is some hope that we'll have a better economy a year from now, making it more likely the funds can be found. Let's wait and see...