Originally published on metropolis.co.jp on March 2014

The way of Tofugu

The year was 2008. I had just graduated from university in the US with a bachelor’s degree in Japanese studies (what was I thinking?). I remember the evening before graduation my compatriots and I got together one last time at the local “Japanese” restaurant. The professors were there too, and while we were waiting for the food they went around the table and asked everyone their post-graduation plans. It went like this: “JET.” “ALT.” “JET.” Every answer went like this until the very last person—me.

“Blogger,” I said without a doubt in my mind. “I’m going to blog about Japan and its language.” I was a smug fool.

It only took three months to burn through my savings. I was so broke I got a “real” job, ditching the J-blogger dream in exchange for rent money. I only occasionally wrote, and my little pot of J-blog soup was put on the back burner. At the end of 2009 my “real” job ran out of money and fired everyone. I had opportunities to start another job (including at YouTube) but I rejected them all. I really wanted this blog thing to work, so one Rocky-esque montage later I was back in the ring, ready for Round 2.

In my first month back I made less than ¥300,000. My second month was a bit more than  ¥400,000. I remained suspicious of this success until a year had gone by and over ¥1 million a month was rolling in. Today, Tofugu (www.tofugu.com) is profitable, with  nearly thirty people working for it.

Is this story just about me? No.

Can it be you? Sure, why not?

Why J-Blog?

Besides blogging about finances, self-development or straight-up blogging about blogging, J-blogging (that’s blogging about Japan-related things) is actually one of the more lucrative blogging categories out there. That may be surprising news to most of you, though. But I assure you, the money is out there. A lot of it, in fact.

Despite Japan’s shrinking economy, dwindling population, environmental issues and decreasing relevance on the Asian stage, there is a disproportionately large number of people on this earth who just plain love Japan.

Here’s what I think happened: Millions upon millions of people grew up with Japanese anime. During my own childhood, in fact, I have memories of my friends and I running home to watch the next exciting installment of Dragonball-Z. There was nothing like it on American TV, and the cliffhanger that ended every episode had me hooked. Back then there were only a few anime shows on TV. Fast forward to 2014 and it feels like you ought to rename any cartoon channel to “The Anime Channel.” Japan has owned our childhoods for twenty-plus years and there’s no slowing in sight.

Animation is just the seed, though. And for some, the seed lays dormant. For others, the seed spreads its roots and a person’s interest in Japan grows: Do you like this anime? The manga version is two chapters ahead! Want more of this Pokémon thing? There’s a card game and video game to go along with it! Did you just watch an episode in Japanese? Hmm, maybe you should learn Japanese. Just think of how many more shows you could watch!

As you can see, it’s not just about cartoons. That’s where it might have started for millions of people, but eventually it grew into something else. For some it’s language, for others it’s travel and for yet others it’s food. The list goes on. This is the group of people who grew up on Japan, and from here on out I’ll be referring to them as the “J-Generation.” This also happens to be the group from which J-bloggers make their livings.

Getting Started

So you want to make some money off your site? Maybe part-time, maybe full-time, maybe just a handful of extra income to go out drinking. I can tell you one thing right away: Your current WordPress acount about your “day-to-day experiences teaching English in Japan” probably will not help you to do this. The J-Generation just doesn’t care.

So what do they care about? At the core, we know they care about anime. Many have moved on to other Japan-interests, but this is where it all originated. From there we can branch out to other Japan-related topics. Some are bigger than others, but they all connect back to anime in one way or another. Personally, I see it as something like this:

The center (anime) happens to be a very lucrative topic. Even the bad anime blogs seem to do pretty well, at least in terms of popularity. There is plenty of audience to go around. Then we branch out to manga, which is really just a sub-category of anime, so the same holds true here. Basically, we’ll learn, the closer you are to “anime” in terms of connections, the more likely you are to be able to profit off your J-Generation audience.

The biggest self-contained section is “language.” There are several reasons for this. First, they’ll eventually see some anime that’s in Japanese, which will plant the seed: “Hmm, maybe I want to learn Japanese.” Second, learning the language just feels like a natural progression. If you like Japan, why not learn the language?

From here the chart branches out further. If you’re interested in language, there’s a good chance you want to travel to Japan. If you want to travel to Japan, you are probably interested in Japanese food. These topics can potentially branch out an infinite number of times, though from my own observation the more steps away from “anime” you are the smaller your audience gets.

So now I want you to consider your own interests and the things you could blog about. While doing so, answer the following questions:

• How many steps away from the core (anime) is it?
• Will the J-Generation care about this? Will I care about this?
• Will I get bored with this topic?
• Do I know more about this topic than 99% of the world?
• Is there a lot worth saying about this topic?

If you find yourself uneasy about any of your answers you should go back to the drawing board. All of these are important for not only your sanity, but also your success. Another problem that I see a lot has to do with how broad your topic is. I’d recommend narrowing your ideas down to something fairly niche. For example, I started by writing about the Japanese language, but I narrowed it down to “self-teaching Japanese” because I was more interested in that. I found there was a large group of people who were interested in this topic specifically and it worked out very well. If you try to write something for everyone you just end up writing something for nobody.