- Joined
- Apr 8, 2012
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Hello Fastlaners!
My name's Tre. I moved to Japan almost 4 years ago with a passion for helping, teaching, loving and encouraging people. I teach conversational English to students ranging from 0 to 70 years old, and I also do a lot of other stuff. In my time here, I got married to a girl that's a lot smarter than me, who's currently doing her PHD. I've been studying Japanese almost every day, and I'm now at the point where I can carry on a basic conversation and do some teaching as well. (If you know Japanese, you don't need to point out my shortcomings...while editing the video I've had to bear with them numerous times!)
You might be thinking that my passion for helping people doesn't necessarily equate with the fastlane. But one of the hardships most of my Japanese friends experience is the hell of working for a Japanese company, where the company is god (I've had friends work at companies where the employees have to bow to a picture of the boss every morning!), your boss is the main speaker at your wedding, mandatory drinking parties take the place of time with friends, family or hobbies, and the outlook on life is, in general, abysmal.
Growing up in Los Angeles, I always had a love for cars, cameras and videogames, three things Japan is well-known for. After arriving here, I was shocked to see that there are almost no internet forums. Despite the stereotype, I think it's safe to say that computer/internet/software knowledge in general is roughly 10 years behind the US. Using English forums, I've gone from a point-and-shoot camera user to a near-pro, shooting weddings regularly and enjoying the creative side of shooting, editing, and putting a smile on people's face by giving them a nice shot of them.
So for the last year or so, my wife and I have been translating some online forum software. The reason there are almost no forums in Japan is because translating the software is just too hard. Japanese is HIGHLY contextual, so you need to figure out where every single button, every single phrase, every single word appears, and in what context, before you can correctly translate it. There are poorly-translated forums out there with little-to-no users because you just can't understand WTH the buttons mean. So we spent a good few months in our spare time translating, and we have it done.
I managed to connect with a Philippino forum guy on oDesk, and we've become good friends through working together over the months. He's helped me put together a great forum with a simple design that won't overwhelm Japanese users who aren't used to forums yet.
And again, before I get into the details, I should mention that my ultimate goal isn't necessarily to make me rich. My ultimate goal is to free people from the slave-driving machine of normal Japanese employment, give them freedom and a chance to grasp hope, and just maybe make us all wealthy in the process.
A simple breakdown of what I'm doing:
-First (well-translated) forum in Japan. Check it out here: www.myKokoroCamera.com. Kokoro is a "feelings" word for "heart". The logo contains the 3 characters for ko-ko-ro, "ココロ", with a camera in the middle.
-I have filmed numerous tutorial videos for camera basics. A search on Youtube in Japanese draws very little to help the beginner to learn anything. The few videos that come up are either professional and over-proper to the point of being boring, or they are just plain unhelpful. I will launch these one at a time hopefully next week to draw traffic to the site.
(Check out episode 1 here...it's not on Youtube yet for a reason! https://vimeo.com/53073716, password is MKK)
-As user number grows, I will continue to film videos in response to people's general questions, or their questions about my videos.
-Once usership grows, we can start charging for ad space. Potential renters would be the online camera retailers, or professional cameramen. To vend your services, you need to pay a fee of $50-100 a month, depending on how the website is growing. We could potentially have regional sub-forums in the future, where cameramen can easily connect to their clients. 10 or 20 pros each paying $50-100 a month in each big city in Japan is not unrealistic.
-Once usership grows to 1000 users, we will also offer premium memberships. There are no picture-hosting websites in Japan either, so if people really want to get into the forums by posting their images, they will need somewhere to put them. We can provide that for them for a few dollars a month, along with a few other premium features.
-If it all works well and grows satisfactorily, it's no problem to create other forums about any other subject. We could potentially become the "kings of forums" in Japan.
-There are a few small camera/lens rental businesses in Japan, but they are hard to work with and appear quite regional. The biggest ones are brick-and-mortar. Once we get maybe 500 regular users, we may launch a lens rental website combined with a try-before-you-buy feature. (I realize this is kinda slowlane, but it could compliment the business well.)
-We're not aiming to make $Texas in straight up income, as I know forums won't do that unless they're truly MASSIVE. If we can pull in $1000 a month by year's end, I think we'll be on track. But I wouldn't be surprised if we can do a lot more than that!! As I write this...I realize that I should set an ambitious goal and have you guys keep me on track. Let's go for $3000 a month income by December 2013! What do you think?
My name's Tre. I moved to Japan almost 4 years ago with a passion for helping, teaching, loving and encouraging people. I teach conversational English to students ranging from 0 to 70 years old, and I also do a lot of other stuff. In my time here, I got married to a girl that's a lot smarter than me, who's currently doing her PHD. I've been studying Japanese almost every day, and I'm now at the point where I can carry on a basic conversation and do some teaching as well. (If you know Japanese, you don't need to point out my shortcomings...while editing the video I've had to bear with them numerous times!)
You might be thinking that my passion for helping people doesn't necessarily equate with the fastlane. But one of the hardships most of my Japanese friends experience is the hell of working for a Japanese company, where the company is god (I've had friends work at companies where the employees have to bow to a picture of the boss every morning!), your boss is the main speaker at your wedding, mandatory drinking parties take the place of time with friends, family or hobbies, and the outlook on life is, in general, abysmal.
Growing up in Los Angeles, I always had a love for cars, cameras and videogames, three things Japan is well-known for. After arriving here, I was shocked to see that there are almost no internet forums. Despite the stereotype, I think it's safe to say that computer/internet/software knowledge in general is roughly 10 years behind the US. Using English forums, I've gone from a point-and-shoot camera user to a near-pro, shooting weddings regularly and enjoying the creative side of shooting, editing, and putting a smile on people's face by giving them a nice shot of them.
So for the last year or so, my wife and I have been translating some online forum software. The reason there are almost no forums in Japan is because translating the software is just too hard. Japanese is HIGHLY contextual, so you need to figure out where every single button, every single phrase, every single word appears, and in what context, before you can correctly translate it. There are poorly-translated forums out there with little-to-no users because you just can't understand WTH the buttons mean. So we spent a good few months in our spare time translating, and we have it done.
I managed to connect with a Philippino forum guy on oDesk, and we've become good friends through working together over the months. He's helped me put together a great forum with a simple design that won't overwhelm Japanese users who aren't used to forums yet.
And again, before I get into the details, I should mention that my ultimate goal isn't necessarily to make me rich. My ultimate goal is to free people from the slave-driving machine of normal Japanese employment, give them freedom and a chance to grasp hope, and just maybe make us all wealthy in the process.
A simple breakdown of what I'm doing:
-First (well-translated) forum in Japan. Check it out here: www.myKokoroCamera.com. Kokoro is a "feelings" word for "heart". The logo contains the 3 characters for ko-ko-ro, "ココロ", with a camera in the middle.
-I have filmed numerous tutorial videos for camera basics. A search on Youtube in Japanese draws very little to help the beginner to learn anything. The few videos that come up are either professional and over-proper to the point of being boring, or they are just plain unhelpful. I will launch these one at a time hopefully next week to draw traffic to the site.
(Check out episode 1 here...it's not on Youtube yet for a reason! https://vimeo.com/53073716, password is MKK)
-As user number grows, I will continue to film videos in response to people's general questions, or their questions about my videos.
-Once usership grows, we can start charging for ad space. Potential renters would be the online camera retailers, or professional cameramen. To vend your services, you need to pay a fee of $50-100 a month, depending on how the website is growing. We could potentially have regional sub-forums in the future, where cameramen can easily connect to their clients. 10 or 20 pros each paying $50-100 a month in each big city in Japan is not unrealistic.
-Once usership grows to 1000 users, we will also offer premium memberships. There are no picture-hosting websites in Japan either, so if people really want to get into the forums by posting their images, they will need somewhere to put them. We can provide that for them for a few dollars a month, along with a few other premium features.
-If it all works well and grows satisfactorily, it's no problem to create other forums about any other subject. We could potentially become the "kings of forums" in Japan.
-There are a few small camera/lens rental businesses in Japan, but they are hard to work with and appear quite regional. The biggest ones are brick-and-mortar. Once we get maybe 500 regular users, we may launch a lens rental website combined with a try-before-you-buy feature. (I realize this is kinda slowlane, but it could compliment the business well.)
-We're not aiming to make $Texas in straight up income, as I know forums won't do that unless they're truly MASSIVE. If we can pull in $1000 a month by year's end, I think we'll be on track. But I wouldn't be surprised if we can do a lot more than that!! As I write this...I realize that I should set an ambitious goal and have you guys keep me on track. Let's go for $3000 a month income by December 2013! What do you think?
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