Years ago, I started ToonJet as a project to hone my skills as a web programmer, and as to support my addiction to cartoons, which has been a problem since the days of Saturday mornings spent sitting in front of the television laughing at cartoons that were already over 40 years old. Thirty years later, here I am writing about some of those same cartoons which have brought joy to children the world over. I consider cartoons a part of our heritage, and something that should be shared with everyone.
Over the past couple of years, as I have done pretty much throughout my entire life, I have gone through changes, including losing a job that was challenging, rewarding, stable and a major source of income, helping my children as they grow and face challenges at school, starting back to school myself at the age of 36. I have somehow managed to balance all of this with my other obsessions, including ToonJet and other projects that I have begun with varying degrees of success.
Although ToonJet doesn't directly compete with some of the newest of technologies, I have tried to incorporate features that I thought that people would appreciate, including the social aspects that allow you to favorite cartoons, leave comments, rate them, and actually interact based on what brought you here, which was more than likely an interest in cartoons.
Apparently over the years as I have neglected the site more than I wanted to, readership has dropped somewhat. Even so, ToonJet receives hundreds of visitors per day, and gets tens of thousands of pageviews each month! As I am sure you noticed, ToonJet once ran on two major sources of income. One being advertising revenue which was gained through the video-serving company, Blip.tv. As of October 8th of last year, I was notified that ToonJet did not fit into Blip's producer lineup, and my account was discontinued. This came as a blow, as I had to quickly find a way to keep the videos online, and I was able to migrate ToonJet's library of 500+ videos over to Youtube within the course of a month or so.
This month, ToonJet was dealt another blow, losing the ability to display Google Adsense ads anywhere on the site, in part because the videos were embedded "from other hosts", being Google's own Youtube. This put the site's revenue effectively at around zero dollars.
But, I am writing this to say that I don't plan to discontinue ToonJet anytime soon. Whether the site still makes money or not, I plan to try to keep it working for as long as I can. It has not been easy. If it had been anyone else, they would have surely walked away by now. These examples are only a small sample of the problems I have faced with the silly little site featuring Dinky the Dog as its mascot, but we have come this far. Why stop now?
You will probably continue to see some form of advertising or another, but even so, I am in the process of finding ways to reduce the clutter, especially on the main page. I believe people still want to watch the cartoons that have been replaced with bold 3D animation and modern cartoons that kids today will understand. Whether the major companies today want to allow you to "waste" your time watching those lost classics of yesteryear, I will keep the site up for as long as possible, whether it makes money or not. So for those who continue to stick around, I know I've said it before, but thank you.
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