Tsuzuki Blog: ¥42K/Month at 100 Posts, ¥1M/Month at One Year
An SEO marketer's side-project blog published its real numbers: after 5 months and 100 articles, revenue was just ¥42K/month concentrated in 2-3 posts. Roughly one year in, it crossed ¥1M/month — then a Google update dropped his top posts from #1 to #5, cutting traffic to near zero.
This is a translation of the Japanese original. The Japanese version and cited primary sources are authoritative for all figures.
The published numbers
| Point | PV | Revenue |
|---|---|---|
| Jan 2019 | Blog starts (side project; day job: SEO marketer) | — |
| Month 3 | Burnout below minimum wage per hour; takes a month off | — |
| Month 5 (100 posts) | ~16,000 | ¥42,000 |
| Month 6 | 20,917 | ¥68,728 (AdSense ¥16.7K + affiliate ¥52K) |
| ~1 year | — | ¥1,000,000/month |
What the data shows
Revenue doesn’t follow article count. At 100 posts, almost all income came from 2-3 video-streaming affiliate articles. The failure mode he names first: “writing about topics nobody searches.”
Then the risk showed up. In a 2019 Google update his long-tail posts fell from #1 to #5 — “below #1, long-tail traffic is basically zero.” What saved him was expanding sideways while things were still good, and only quitting his job after saving two years of living costs.
Lessons
1. The real edge was transferring day-job SEO skills into a personal asset. The right side-hustle question isn’t “what’s profitable” but “where do my professional skills convert into equity.”
2. An affiliate blog is a bet on a handful of keyword rankings. That fragility is exactly why content sites sell for only ~2 years of profit.
3. “Invest when winning” was the shared conclusion of Japan’s top bloggers — diversify during the good months; the good months are not under your control.
Related cases
Sources
- Tsuzuki Blog「ブログ100記事を書いた結果は?収益・PVと実データ」
- Tsuzuki Blog「【運営レポート】ブログ6ヶ月目のご報告まとめ」
- ロリポップ公式メディア トップブロガー対談【後編】(ヒトデ・きぐち・Tsuzuki)
This article summarizes and analyzes the public sources above. Please refer to the primary sources for details.