A gadget blog run by a full-time employee: 600,000 PV/month, ¥1.4M/month — what Makrin built over 2 years and 330 articles

When the “side-hustle blogger” title comes with numbers attached

Blog revenue disclosures are usually published after someone has gone full-time. Records of hitting seven-figure monthly yen while still employed full-time are, in fact, rare. A conversation published in August 2019 by Sanctuary Books’ web magazine “Hon-yoma,” between Makrin (Ryota Arai) and Sanzzo, is one of those rare records.

Makrin runs “Makrin,” a review blog covering gadgets (80%) and home appliances (20%). He started blogging at 34, and by the time of the interview had been running it for over two years, publishing 330 articles. Over 600,000 monthly PV, with May’s revenue at about ¥1.4 million — all while working in marketing at a foreign-owned company that permits side jobs.

Numbers disclosed in the conversation

Sanzzo calls himself a “neo-window-seat employee” and describes his effort split as “roughly 2:8, main job to side hustle.” Both men share the trait of working marketing jobs full-time, and the conversation runs under the theme of “the branding strategy of an employee blogger who earns.”

The revenue breakdown — over half from retail affiliates

More than half of Makrin’s roughly ¥1.4 million comes from retail (product) affiliate commissions. Gadget reviews structurally pair well with retail affiliate programs like Amazon and Rakuten, because by the time a reader is searching, “what to buy is already decided, or narrowed to 2–3 options.” Since it sits at the final stage of comparison shopping, conversion per article runs high.

A second revenue stream is a paid note article published in October 2018, which continues to sell steadily, worth ¥160,000 as of the interview. But that’s just over 10% of the total ¥1.4 million, not the main driver. It reads more accurately as a supporting line item to the blog’s core revenue.

No dramatic turning point in this case

The conclusion up front: nothing described in Makrin’s two years reads as a single moment where revenue suddenly jumped. No one-time spike, no viral moment, no external platform hit that changed the trajectory. What actually mattered were two design decisions:

One decision: not writing trend pieces. “I don’t write trend articles, only evergreen articles that have some level of ongoing demand at any time,” he says. This trades momentary traffic spikes for keeping all 330 articles as durable inventory. The 600,000 monthly PV comes from the sum of the 330 articles written over two years, not from the strength of new posts. Put differently, this approach guaranteed that “the first year’s numbers would feel thin” from the outset.

The other: not hiding being a corporate employee, leading with it instead. Makrin says “being a company employee is itself a powerful brand,” and notes it actually led to a magazine feature about him. His read: in a market saturated with full-time professional bloggers, the attribute “seven-figure monthly revenue while holding a day job” becomes scarcity in itself.

What was actually working

Breaking down what’s underneath the numbers, at least three layers emerge.

Differentiation through multiplication. Makrin describes his thinking as “affiliation × blog category × SNS type.” Gadget reviews alone have countless competitors. But multiply in “marketer at a foreign company” and the pool shrinks sharply. Multiply in social media presence, and it becomes nearly unique. Rather than trying to be #1 on a single axis, this is about multiplying three axes together to be #1 at their intersection.

Turning a time constraint into a spec. Makrin dedicates 5 hours a day to the blog. “During lunch break I eat quickly at my desk, then write or shoot photos in a conference room”, “forcing yourself into a routine to build an environment where you keep going is essential.” A full-time employee’s discretionary time tends to be irregular, but by cramming even the photo shoots into a fixed lunch-break slot, he built an operation that doesn’t rely on willpower. His publishing cadence is one article every 2–3 days. 330 articles over two years checks out against that pace almost exactly.

Bearing the credibility cost of reviews himself. Gadget reviews require buying the actual hardware, photographing it, and using it. The financial and time cost acts as a barrier to entry, while original photos double as a signal, to both search engines and readers, that this is primary-source material. Retail affiliate rates are never high, but this category has heavy pre-purchase search intent, and more articles means fewer missed conversions.

Risks not to overlook

• Low unit economics. Retail affiliate commission rates typically run a few percent; ¥1.4 million/month is the result of “stacking low-value commissions at high volume,” not “a handful of high-value deals.” A low-leverage structure where revenue falls in direct proportion to traffic.
• Search dependence. The evergreen-only strategy is the flip side of total reliance on SEO. By giving up on trend content, there’s no fallback when the search algorithm shifts.
• The cost of using his real name and face. Turning “being a company employee” into a brand collapses the moment the relationship between his employer and his side job changes. It only works because side jobs are permitted in the first place.
• Note is only supplementary. The ¥160,000 from the paid note is an order of magnitude smaller than the core blog revenue. Reading this as a case built primarily around content sales would be a misread.

How far can this be copied?

What’s reproducible: turning your publishing cadence into a routine, and designing articles around evergreen content instead of trends. Neither requires capital or an existing following, either can be applied starting today, purely as a decision.

What’s hard to reproduce is the premise that his day job is in marketing. Sanzzo, the interview partner, is also in marketing/advertising at a major company, and both men are structurally converting a professional skill directly into their side hustle. The branding-strategy framing itself carries the voice of someone with that specific professional background, and needs to be read with that discount applied.

Another factor that can’t be reproduced: the timing of entering the gadget-review category around 2017. Between when an individual blog could capture 600,000 PV in this space and today (with official manufacturer channels, large comparison media, and video reviews all thickening the field) the same 330 articles may not carry the same value. These numbers are, ultimately, a snapshot as of May 2019.

Related reading

• Over ¥10 million at peak, and “80% of our articles dropped” — three top bloggers reveal the light and dark sides in one conversation — sees both the ceiling of blog revenue and the fragility of search-algorithm swings on the same table.
• 24 Kindle books — a case of a full-time employee building a different kind of stock content asset while keeping his day job.