SLIDE 1 As you may know, I'm in my 50's, and I already have a job. I run my website, The TV MegaSite, Inc. It's a corporation and my full time job. I will probably never have another job interview (and thank god for that because I hate them). However, I am working to improve my website, my business, and I hope that one day, I will either have an investor, or I will be able to sell the site. So that's my focus here today. Rather than a job interview, I'm presenting my site, what it's about, and "selling it" to you, the potential investors or buyers. However, I'm sure if I were doing this for real, I would have to have a more high tech presentation than this, and I would be asking for a specific amount of money. So, my name is Suzanne Lanoue and welcome to my presentation for The TV MegaSite! SLIDE 2 - HISTORY I started my site in the 90's as a hobby while I worked for the search engine Ask Jeeves (now ask.com). CLICK ON LINK Here's a little glimpse of what it looked like back then, from the Internet Archive. It grew and grew, and the site made money from ads, so I incorporated it. I turned it into a business. My main focus has been to put up content and make it a valuable resource, NOT to make money on it. However, I would like to make it an even more valuable resource, and make more money with it. Right now, any money that the site makes, goes back into the site. In the early-mid 2000's, the site was getting over 300,000 unique visitors per month, which is very good. Now it's closer to 23,000. This is due to a number of reasons. The site was hacked, and the perpertrators deleted the site. It took us a while to get the content back up and the server fixed. We lost a lot of our regular visitors then. CLICK ON LINK Here's our latest design, and here's our NEW design (click) Even though it's a business, we don't have any real budget. Everyone who works on the site is a volunteer. SLIDE 3 - PROS We put up fresh content on our site every single day. I say "we" because there are about 25 of us who work on the site. It is a communal effort. All of us are volunteers. No one makes a salary, although I do give out gifts during the holidays to the volunteers. I hope that one day we can all be paid. Our site, and the shows we cover, have very loyal fanbases. Because I've been doing this so long, I have many contacts with TV networks and their PR people. Since I work at home, I have flexibility to work on the site any time and anywhere. The site has over 80,000 pages, not including images. We cover over 100 shows in depth as well as daytime and primetime news in general. We have interviews and other articles, reviews, episodes guides, recaps, fan fiction, transcripts, news, spoilers, photos, trivia quizzes, puzzles, cast lists and much more. Although traditional network and cable television is having financial problems, creatively, this era has been called the second Golden Age of TV, so people do watch a lot of television. They're just not watching on a television set as they used to. They're watching on phones, computers, tablets, game systems and more. This year, the ad revenue for our site has gone up since last year, so that's very encouraging. I'm pretty active on social media, both for myself and for the site. We're on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr and Pinterest. No other site covers both daytime and primetime, from a fan's perspective. SLIDE 4 - CONS A few other things besides the hacking contributed to the site's numbers going down. When we began the site, we concentrated more on daytime soap operas, and there were a dozen of them. They started getting canceled, and now there are only four. There is a lot more competition with other web sites than there used to be, especially with regard to primetime series. We've never had a real budget for our site. I sometimes spend my own money on it. TV shows come and go quickly, so we struggle to build pages for a show before it gets canceled, due to the design and technology we've been using. We like to focus on current shows, but that can be difficult. Finding and keeping reliable and capable volunteers is always a challenge. Because the site is so large, keeping it updated and error free can be almost impossible. Our site is mostly text, with some photos. Today's TV viewers, especially you younger people, like animation, videos, music etc. It can be difficult to attract visitors and keep them with our old school design, technology and focus. Even finding the time to change such a large site to a newer design is very difficult, so we have more than one design on the site. SLIDE 5 Here are the steps I've been taking lately to improve the site. Last year, I decided to move the site from our old software, to Wordpress, which is a Content Management System. This solves many problems that we've had with the older site. It's much faster and easier to use. We have a new design, new name and new logo, which I like more. I think it's cooler and more up-to-date. Working on this degree, and writing so much, has improved my writing and blogging skills, and my knowledge of mass media, marketing, public relations, reviewing and reporting. I've been working not only on making more contacts, so that I can get more interviews, but communicating better with the contacts I already have. I get a lot of email, and I frequently don't have time to read through it, but I try to look more now for interview, review and revenue opportunities. When the daytime soaps started getting canceled, I saw that this was happening, so I began concentrating more on primetime shows. Recently, we've also been adding more streaming shows to our news, reviews etc. I've tried spending more time on social media promoting shows, and our site, and buying a few ads here and there. We have some volunteers who go to San Diego Comic-Con and some other events, and I've paid for some button and sticker giveaways in the past. I hope to do more of that. This summer I will hopefully have an internship with the local paper. Once I graduate, I hope I can write some articles for either that paper or others, and for other sites. I plan to spend more time investigating more entertainment sites where I can write articles and build my publishing experience and brand. With all of that, I'm hopeful that I can join the Television Critics Association, which only accepts new members twice per year. This would allow me to attend their bi-annual events, and I will then have access to more PR, more networks, more photos, and more interviews. TV networks and their PR will take us more seriously. I believe this will create more buzz and more revenue in a snowball effect. SLIDE 6 With your investment, we would be able to hire more writers and other workers for the site, to make even more fresh content. Also, the move from tvmegasite.net to tvmeg.com would go much faster. We could buy more advertising, in order to get more traffic. We could make more video-related content, to attract younger visitors. We could hire a professional web design team to make an even better design for the site in the future. We could send our teams to more industry events, such as the Emmys, all of the fan club events, and more conventions, to promote the site. SLIDE 7 With a little bit of funding, this site has a lot of potential for more growth and revenue. I believe that it can become a fantastic resource for TV - better than IMDB, Wikipedia, Deadline or TV.COM - if only we had more workers to add content. That kind of site gets worldwide recognition - and you would get that recognition as well. We could be on the cutting edge of entertainment news and perhaps one day have our own TV show, like TMZ does. In funding this site, you're putting your money behind years of my experience and wisdom, as well as that of my volunteers, and all of the knowledge and content that we have. SLIDE 8 Here you can find links to my professional resume, my biography (both for my site and personal), and to the sites. Thanks. I will take your questions now.