Month: September 2022

Blogging is a popular side hustle, but how many people actually make money from it?
And how much can you really earn?

Most of the information floating around in books and online comes from professional bloggers or people who write posts in earnest. There’s almost nothing out there from people who just blog casually.

When I set up this blog, I decided to use WordPress, but it costs money, and I remember wondering when I would ever break even.
I’m still in the red, but revenue has finally started coming in, so I’d like to write about where this blog stands right now.

The current state of the blog

Starting with the basics: my first post went up in March 2021, and as of writing this in September 2022, the blog has 46 posts.
That works out to about four posts a month. The quality varies quite a bit, and most posts are things I can write in about an hour.

The main topics are programming and everyday life.

The latest traffic numbers are about 3,500 pageviews and about 2,500 visitors per month.
My most popular post gets about 35 views a day.

The trends I can see are that programming posts are in high demand, and that even with few visitors, pageviews add up because the same people come back repeatedly.

Everyday-life posts, on the other hand, are mostly diary-style pieces that don’t turn up in searches, so they get far less traffic.

The current state of the income

Right now I mainly use Google AdSense and Amazon Associates.

I passed the AdSense review in May 2022 (I think I had about 35 posts at the time), and my total earnings so far are 5,000 yen.

My Amazon Associates earnings are 0 yen.

So the blog’s total income to date is 5,000 yen.

As for trends, I don’t really write Amazon product reviews, so the reality is that I hardly ever post Amazon links in the first place.
Which means it might as well not exist…

Thinking about revenue rates

Google ads pay roughly 1 yen per 100 impressions, and for a click, around 10 yen on mobile and around 50 yen on desktop.

So the return rate is fairly low, and it seems hard to earn any real income without racking up serious pageviews.

With Amazon Associates, I believe the commission is somewhere around 3–10% of the item purchased. (Apologies if I’ve got that wrong.)
So if someone buys a 10,000-yen item, you can earn up to about 1,000 yen.
It’s the kind of ad that can bring in decent income even without huge traffic.

Apparently, for most people who make money blogging, ads like Amazon’s bring in more than Google ads do.

Blog running costs

In my case the running costs are high: 15,000 yen a year.
Almost all of that is the hosting contract.

If you shop around, there are hosts that charge about 5,000 yen for three years and keep setup fees down too, so that’s much better value.

I’m sticking with my current host because I don’t really know how to migrate, and because it has a good reputation.

At this rate, who knows when I’ll actually turn a profit.

That said, even doing this pretty haphazardly, just keeping at it earns more than I expected.
I’ve come to feel that blogging rewards you in proportion to how seriously you take it.
Also, pageviews don’t usually drop sharply all of a sudden, so as long as you keep writing reasonably well, the numbers steadily climb.

More than anything, blogging is genuinely fun, so I’d encourage everyone to give it a try, even for free.

I visited Waseda University for the first time to attend a conference.
Waseda is as well known as Keio as a prestigious private university, but you rarely see photos of it, and I had so little sense of its campus that I almost wondered whether it really existed.

There was a conference at Waseda University, and I was really looking forward to finally setting foot on the famous Waseda campus.

My first impression of Waseda University was: what a great atmosphere!
It sits close to busy districts like Takadanobaba, yet it isn’t just a cluster of office buildings—it’s a university with a proper, characterful campus.

Impressions of Waseda University

Here are my rough impressions of Waseda University.

• Lots of stylish cafés
• Many international students and visitors
• Spacious for a campus in central Tokyo (though still compact compared with rural universities)
• A European feel

Compared with the University of Tokyo, Kyoto University, and the other former imperial universities, the campus grounds are small and the buildings tall.
The buildings stand fairly close together and there aren’t all that many of them, so it didn’t feel like a sprawling campus.

Since the buildings are close together, moving between classes looks easy.
That said, there are so many floors that even once you reach a building, getting up to your room takes a while.

Some of the university buildings are made of brick, giving the campus a somewhat Western atmosphere.
There’s a building called Building 3 where an older structure appears to be wrapped inside a newer one; from the inside you can see both the characterful old section and the modern one, and neither clashes with the other—together they create a wonderful atmosphere.

Even the classrooms themselves were stylish and chic.
The rooms in the newer building are done in black and white for a sleek look, while those in the older building don’t feel dated at all—they retain the warmth of wood while remaining comfortable spaces.

Another surprise was finding escalators inside the buildings.
As someone at a national university, where escalators inside academic buildings are almost unheard of, I couldn’t help thinking how nice it must be to move between classrooms so easily.

I was struck by how many international visitors there were on campus.
There’s a Waseda University café in front of the main gate, and even during summer break it was full of people from abroad.

The café also sells university merchandise, and it was packed with Waseda Bears.
Kind of adorable.

When you think of Waseda, isn’t the image below what comes to mind?

I had always wondered why the statue was shown from behind, but it turns out the photo is taken from inside the campus looking out toward the main gate.

The iconic building actually stands outside the main gate and doesn’t seem to house classrooms or anything like that.
Photograph it from behind the statue and you get this classic shot.

The statue is of Shigenobu Okuma, and it greets you right as you come through the main gate.

The atmosphere around campus

The area around the university is full of stylish shops and restaurants—a neighborhood built for students that still has real character.
On the walk from Waseda Station to campus there are chain restaurants, cafés, and general goods stores, and with a Tully’s nearby you could easily spend a relaxed afternoon in a café.

Just outside the main gate there’s what seems to be an ASICS Waseda University store, apparently stocking Waseda collaboration merchandise.
What even is this shop, haha.

Everywhere I looked, Waseda University was beautiful and its atmosphere carefully preserved.
It felt clearly different from the university I had imagined, and I thoroughly enjoyed the visit.

Photos below.