Blog, niche site and newsletter case studies — 2/4
Blog and niche site cases
25–48 of 91
Trivipedia: 560 Articles Mass-Produced With Claude Code in 3 Months for ¥12,948 a Month. Reading an AI-Automated Media Site by Its Own Reports
A trivia blog opened in 2017 and dormant for seven years relaunched as Trivipedia in June 2026. A Claude Code pipeline published 90 articles in June, 174 in July and 286 in August. August brought 54,786 pageviews, ¥11,255 in AdSense and ¥1,693 in note sales. Pageviews doubled monthly while search CTR fell from 4.22% to 2.80%.
Fukugyo Compass: Under ¥10K/Month for 8 Months, Then ¥4.84M in Month 25 — Inside Kunitomi's 200-Hour-a-Month Side-Hustle Blog
Fukugyo Compass, the side-hustle blog run by Kunitomi — a salaried worker who moved from a trust bank to a web marketing firm — earned under ¥10K/month for its first 8 months, hit ¥4.84M in month 25, and peaked at ¥12M/month. We chart the monthly progression and the 200 hours per month behind it from two interviews.
Ikeda Hayato: The Blogger Who Published His Full ¥4.05M Monthly Revenue Breakdown — Rereading the Origin of Japan's "Income Report" Culture
Ikeda Hayato of "Mada Tokyo de Shomo Shiteru no?" published the breakdown of his roughly ¥4.05M in January 2017 revenue (about ¥2M affiliate, ¥1.07M note sales, 2.18M pageviews) on note. A third-party compilation traces the arc from ¥40K a month in 2012 to ¥5.21M in February 2016. Rereading measured records of personal-blog economics.
Tenshoku Antenna: A One-Person Media Site, ¥700M Plus a ¥300M Earnout from Listed Company Logly
Tenshoku Antenna, a Japanese job-change media site run by moto (Shunsuke Totsuka) as a one-person company, became a 100% subsidiary of listed adtech firm Logly in April 2021. The founder disclosed the price himself: ¥700M plus an earnout of up to ¥300M. Negotiations took about six months, and his director compensation exceeded ¥100M a year — one of the largest disclosed exits for an individual-run media site in Japan.
Starter Story: The $91.7K/Month Startup Case-Study Media Acquired by HubSpot — Months After the Founder Tweeted "HubSpot Should Acquire Starter Story"
Starter Story, the startup case-study media, was acquired by HubSpot in February 2026 while self-disclosing $91.7K/month and $1.1M/year in revenue with 1.6M monthly visits. Founder Pat Walls had tweeted "HubSpot should acquire Starter Story" just months earlier. The price is undisclosed.
The God of Blog: 310K Pageviews Made ¥47K a Month, 6,499 Pageviews Made ¥53K — a 6-Year-2-Month Measured Record of Niche Selection
A One Piece analysis blog earned ¥46,801 on 310K monthly pageviews; the third blog, about blogging itself, earns ¥53,232 on 6,499. Per-pageview value of ¥0.15 versus ¥8.2 — Hebo published the full 6 years 2 months it took to reach ¥50K a month, failed sites' numbers included.
manablog at ¥1,000,000–1,500,000/month, and two sites left idle 3–4 years before closing — the numbers Manabu published under his real name
manablog earns ¥1,000,000–1,500,000/month at 500,000 PV, with one article alone worth roughly ¥500,000/month, while two other sites earning ¥100,000–150,000/month closed after 3–4 years of neglect.
Lenny’s Newsletter: 377K Free, 18K Paid, $2M+ a Year — 450 Paid Subscribers in the First 6 Weeks After Going Paid
Lenny Rachitsky's newsletter earns $2M+/year from 377K free and 18K+ paid subscribers (a 4–5% conversion rate). Six weeks after going paid on April 7, 2020, it had 450 paid subscribers. The turning point wasn't the paywall itself — it was rebuilding the product as a Slack community.
Daily Lodging Report: A $450/Year Husband-and-Wife Hotel Newsletter Sells to Skift
The Daily Lodging Report, a daily newsletter covering the hotel and lodging industry, was run by Alan Woinski and his wife, who sold annual subscriptions at $450 to thousands of readers before selling the business to travel-industry media company Skift in 2021. The endpoint of a business built simply on summarizing the industry, every single day.
Courier: An Entrepreneur-Focused Print Magazine Sold to Mailchimp — a Contrarian Exit for Paper in the Digital Age
Courier, a UK print magazine covering small-business and entrepreneurial culture, was acquired by email giant Mailchimp. In an era when anyone can start a newsletter, a media brand built deliberately on paper was bought as a brand vehicle for a digital company.
SEO Blog Backlinko, 500K Monthly Visits, Sells to Semrush for Seven Figures: The Rare Strategy of Doing the Opposite of Mass Production
Brian Dean's SEO blog Backlinko drew 500,000 monthly visits with a strategy of publishing few articles but polishing each one to perfection, and was sold to SEO tool giant Semrush for seven figures (hundreds of millions of yen). A classic case in content strategy: winning at the polar opposite of "write a lot."
Why We Buy: Subscribers Up 1.4x, Revenue Up 3.3x — the Structure Behind a ¥150M Year in 2024
Marketer newsletter "Why We Buy" grew from 50,000 subscribers and $300K in annual revenue to nearly 70,000 subscribers and roughly $1M. This piece examines the mechanics behind subscribers growing 1.4x while revenue grew 3.3x.
WFH Advisor: A Pandemic-Era Side Project Sells for 34x Monthly Revenue — How to Exit a “Trend Niche”
WFH Advisor, an information site about remote work setups, was launched as a side project by three co-founders during the pandemic, grew through SEO, and was sold for 34 times its monthly revenue. A concise case illustrating the standard lifecycle of a niche site riding a trend.
Parenting Media Site Red Tricycle Sold for $6.5M — Riding Out the "Winter of Ad-Supported Media" Through the Exit
Red Tricycle, a parenting media site that suggests what families should do on the weekend, grew to millions of monthly users under founder Jacqui Boland and was sold to family app company Tinybeans for $6.5M (about ¥975 million). A realistic exit for ad-dependent media.
UNO Magazine: Buying a Dying Magazine, Turning It Around, Selling It Again — the Business of “Media Flipping”
UNO, a New Zealand magazine, was rescued from the brink of closure by Jenny Rudd and rebuilt before being sold to SAO Media. It shows that the same business as real-estate flipping — buy distressed, fix, sell — works for media too.
Canada's Business Newsletter The Peak Sells to Young-Skewing Media Company ZoomerMedia: Replicating Morning Brew All the Way to the Exit
The Peak, a three-founder Canadian business newsletter and podcast billed as "Canada's Morning Brew," was sold to ZoomerMedia. A case showing that "geographic transplantation" of a proven format can be replicated from launch all the way to exit.
Developer Media The New Stack Sold to Investment Firm Insight Partners: An Unusual Buyer Purchasing "Engineer Trust"
The New Stack, a specialized media outlet covering cloud-native and DevOps, was acquired by major VC/PE firm Insight Partners. Not a media company, not a tech company — an investment firm buying a developer media outlet symbolizes how diverse the pool of media buyers has become.
VC Industry Newsletter StrictlyVC Sells to TechCrunch: Ten Years of an "Industry Insider" Becoming Media
StrictlyVC, a venture-capital industry newsletter started single-handedly by former TechCrunch reporter Connie Loizos, was acquired by her old employer, TechCrunch. A rare shape of deal where an industry insider's personal newsletter gets imported back into the industry's biggest media outlet.
CSS-Tricks, 7 Million Monthly Pageviews, Sold to DigitalOcean: A Personal Blog's 15-Year Journey to Becoming "the Textbook"
CSS-Tricks, started by Chris Coyier as a personal blog, grew into a web-development reference site with 7 million monthly pageviews and was acquired by cloud provider DigitalOcean. The biggest exit of its kind for a technical blog, and a demonstration of the asset value of "searched-for technical knowledge."
The Coast, Founded in 1993, Joins Local Media Coalition Overstory: The Landing Point of 30 Years of Local Reporting
The Coast, a weekly alternative paper published in Halifax, Canada since 1993, was sold by its founding couple to Overstory Media Group, a coalition of local media outlets. A long-established local media succession that navigates the print-to-digital transition through a capital injection via acquisition.
A solo operator earning 102 million yen a year. How an affiliate marketer who fell from 75 million to 50 million broke his own record
Kuroneko-ya reported annual income of 75 million yen in 2016, 69 million in 2017, and 50 million in 2018 — three straight years of decline — before recovering to 102 million yen in 2021. With zero employees and almost no outsourcing, he has published, year by year, the story of shifting his main revenue from SEO affiliate marketing to selling his own courses.
The Half Marathon Guide: “Just Half Marathon Race Info” Adds Up to $1.2M — Sold to an Individual Buyer
The Half Marathon Guide, a site cataloging half marathons across the U.S., earned founder Terrell Johnson roughly $1.2M (about ¥180M) cumulatively before being sold to individual buyer Michael Mazzara. A case study in the compounding power of unglamorous information curation: "the race calendar."
Wellness Blog Root + Revel Passes from One Individual to Another: An Everyday Scene from the "Used-Blog Market"
Root + Revel, a holistic wellness blog, was transferred from founder Kate Kordsmeier to an individual buyer, Sarah Ware. A record of "person-to-person blog sales" — not a headline deal — functioning as an ordinary, everyday transaction.
CBWG: From a Local Sports Blog to a $25M Sale to XLMedia — Riding a “Change in the Law” at Full Speed
CBWG Media, which started as a Philadelphia sports blog, rode the wave of sports betting legalization triggered by the 2018 U.S. Supreme Court ruling and grew rapidly as a bookmaker-referral media business. In 2021 it was sold to the UK's XLMedia for $25M (about ¥3.75 billion). A case of seizing the market moment created by regulatory change.