As the cartoon erotica boom flourishes, CartoonBucks.com (www.cartoonbucks.com) has grown into a prime destination for original anime content and affiliate programs designed for Webmasters.
Launched in November of 2000 by Charlo Barbosa, CartoonBucks.com began to carve a niche in the anime genre before the current deluge of erotic cartoon sites started to flood the market. "I decided to launch the site because I figured not too many people were doing anime or hentai sites and there weren't really any big, big sites out that had it," says Barbosa, the company's president.
It was at the January 2001 Internext convention that Barbosa says he reaped the benefits of the all-important buzz factor. A party at Mandalay Bay thrown by Barbosa and Club Rubber attracted more than 4,000 partygoers and ultimately delivered the hype Barbosa needed for the venture to take off. "That really launched it," he says. After Barbosa's well-timed soir�ee in Las Vegas, industry honchos began referring to the Web entrepreneur as "The Cartoon Guy."
Made up of six Websites devoted to original hentai and other anime content, the sudden success of CartoonBucks.com caught Barbosa by surprise. "I really didn't know how much cartoons would even make when I started it," says Barbosa. "I knew the sites were making a little bit of money, but I never ever thought they would make a lot of money."
Based in Vancouver, Canada, Barbosa manages a staff of nine, with artists stationed in Miami and Australia. Barbosa says many of the pictures he uses online come to him free from members who just want their work to be viewed on the Internet.
Barbosa says that when he first launched the site, many Webmasters doubted his chances for success. "No one was into cartoons. Everyone laughed at me, like, 'Cartoons, you gotta be crazy.' So, I added a couple of sites to CartoonBucks and in December [of 2000], I leased a few sites from Oscar Perez in Miami and plugged them into CartoonBucks." Perez, according to Barbosa, has been in the cartoon business for four years and is "one of the top five traffic guys for cartoons."
One of the sites Barbosa has leased from Perez is HentaiKitty.com (www.hentaikitty.com), a search engine and links gallery for all things hentai. HentaiKitty.com has been ranked No. 1 on Yahoo!'s (www.yahoo.com) links list as the most popular hentai site. "It's basically a resource site," says Barbosa, "a destination on the Internet where people can submit their Websites for review to potentially be listed among other popular links. We only list the really, really good anime, hentai, and cartoon sites."
In addition to HentaiKitty.com, the CartoonBucks program includes CartoonPorn (www.cartoonporn.com), CartoonSex (www.cartoonsex.com), Anime-America (www.anime-america.com), AnimeAM (www.animeam.com), Agent-H (www.agent-h.com), and NastyXXXhentai (www.nastyxxxhentai.com).
Barbosa says the success of CartoonBucks.com has allowed him to focus on creating content for others. "A lot of people kept asking me at [Internext], do I have content to lease, do I have content to sell?"
The foray into content production led to the development of HentaiPixxx.com (www.hentaipixxx.com). Launched in September 2001, the content-driven site was developed by Barbosa and his partner through an offshoot venture known as The Plugin Company (www.plugincompany.com). The site employs 40 animators who design a smorgasbord of interactive flash movies, games, and 3D art. Two of the most successful endeavors for The Plugin Company have been the adult sitcom-style series the dirty ernie show, and 3 Way, a sexed-up Charlie's Angels-inspired flash movie that incorporates the latest hentai and Japanese-style artwork.
Barbosa says the popularity of the animated series has drummed up interest from adult and mainstream companies seeking fresh material; he adds that his team can also create custom shows for a monthly fee based on each episode. "No one can compete with the quality of our work and flash design," he boasts.
Another start-up entity cultivated by Barbosa is the site Poker.com (www.poker.com), an online marketing and licensing company that sells and sub-licenses Internet Poker card rooms, casinos, sports books, race tracks, bingo, lotteries, and keno gaming systems. Barbosa has developed gaming software in conjunction with the online gaming portal, which allows users to play the card game against enthusiasts around the world for real money. Poker.com - a domain name Barbosa procured for $1 million in 1999 - is currently trading on the Nasdaq OTC Bulletin Board under the ticker PKER.
But the center of attention for Barbosa remains the hentai/ anime operation. "The content is what we want to focus on... trying to re-sell our content and designs by signing deals with larger network companies."
