Small Start
Real revenue and exit numbers from businesses that started small.
Real numbers from small businesses, solo founders and micro-exits in Japan and beyond
374 cases published, every figure linked to its source. JPY amounts are approximate conversions at ¥150/USD.
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Genji Reincarnation: 32 copies in month one, and a payout of zero
Usagijo spent about three years building the visual novel Genji Reincarnation and sold 32 copies on Steam in its first month, one of them refunded. Revenue never reached Steam's $100 payout threshold. Ten press pitches, 25,200 ad impressions and 24 activated review keys are all disclosed tactic by tactic.
Kokou no Tabibito: A Multi-Topic Blog Hitting 500K Monthly PV and ¥300,000/Month in About a Year
Yonesuke, who runs the fishing, outdoors and travel blog "Kokou no Tabibito," disclosed reaching 500,000 monthly pageviews and ¥300,000/month about one year after launch — roughly ¥0.6 per PV. His thesis: a general-interest blog can compete with niche blogs by exhaustively covering each category.
Pirsch Analytics: One-Employee GA Alternative Grows MRR From $11,000 to $14,300, Publishing Its Numbers Every Year
German cookieless analytics tool Pirsch Analytics published its 2025 numbers: MRR grew 24% from ~$11,000 to ~$14,300, paid subscribers went from 553 to 627, and annual net sales were about $130,000 — all with one employee plus two co-founders helping part-time in year five.
Fomo: a $10,000 MRR widget bought on seller financing, a best month of $154,000, and a seven-figure sale to Relay Commerce six years later
Ryan Kulp bought the social proof widget Notify at roughly $10,000 MRR in 2016, relaunched it as Fomo, and ran 39 consecutive months of growth to a best month of $154,000. Revenue at the 2022 sale to Relay Commerce was $107,200 a month. Both the purchase price and the sale price stay undisclosed.
Okashi Kaigyo Lab: a 13-tsubo cake shop booked ¥27,073,172 in year three and published every monthly sales figure to the yen
The cake shop behind the Japanese blog Okashi Kaigyo Lab booked ¥21,730,380 in its second year and ¥27,073,172 in its third. From 24 months of published sales figures, a 13-tsubo shop run by a couple on ¥60,000 rent shows how 45% cost of goods still leaves a margin.
Payout: A Class-Action App Vibe-Coded in 14 Days Reached $1,003,227 ARR in 9 Months. It Cost About $10 to Build, and a Partner With 10 Million Followers Grew It
Connor Burd built Payout, an app that finds class-action settlements, in 14 days using only Claude Code and Cursor. During a summer 2025 hackathon it reached 17,000 users and $30,017 in revenue, hit about $20K MRR in 50 days, and reported $1,003,227 ARR in May 2026. Build cost was about $10. Growth came from a partner with over 10 million followers.
Columns
Columns →AdSense pays ¥386 per 1,000 pageviews. What 225 blogs sold on Rakko M&A say about the distance between PV and revenue
We counted every sold AdSense-monetized blog and media site on the Japanese marketplace Rakko M&A, 240 listings in all. For the 225 with both monthly pageviews and monthly revenue, the median revenue per 1,000 PV is ¥386, and half the listings fall between ¥200 and ¥800. Above 300K PV the rate drops, to ¥179 for sites with 1M PV or more. Sale prices ran 19 months of revenue.
ColumnsOur Own Record #6: 33K monthly users, and 44% of the growth came from two articles about an October price increase
Five weeks after Our Own Record #5, the personal-finance content site reached 33,244 active users in the last 30 days (16,758 in the 30 before) and 4,088 search clicks in 28 days. Two articles on an October price increase carried 44% of the growth, and one of them accounts for 20% of all users. The Korean edition overtook English, and we explain why.
Columns¥1M a Month in 6 Months, 13 Months and 14 Years: the Fastest Cannot Step Away from the Work
Seven of our 385 cases record monthly revenue of exactly ¥1,000,000. All are Japanese, all solo or side businesses. Even among those whose period can be pinned down, a case that took six months sits next to one that took 14 years. The faster they arrived, the harder it was to step away.
Columns5 owned-media success stories: from a ¥1M/mo blog to a $5.8M exit, and they split into 3 models
Five cases from our archive where a self-owned media property is the core customer engine, all with published figures: a side blog at ¥1M a month, a newsletter grossing $900K a year on 75,000 readers, a SaaS built on 10 landing pages, a course with a 300K-strong list, and a comparison site sold for $5.8M. They share one label and run three different businesses.