My Tiny Blog Ranks Above Rotten Tomatoes and IMDB

HackerNoon Reporter: Please tell us briefly about your background

My career as a writer began in 2015 when I was still in college. I started writing clickbait articles for a company called TheRichest, which is owned by Valnet. IF you don't know who that is, they are a large media company that owns ScreenRant, GameRant, CBR, and more. THEY ARE HUGE That was my first ever paid freelance writing gig and I'm eternally grateful for all they taught me about SEO, formatting, using WordPress, finding topics, writing in an enticing way. They also taught me how to interact with editors as a writer.

The money wasn't too bad itself.

My best article got 1.8 million views in 30 days and scored me over $700 USD for one article.

From that point on, I was hooked. And that feeling of prestige from getting millions of people to read my article is what fueled me to continue content writing, and eventually make it a full-time career.

I wrote for Gaijinpot.com, thegamer.com, keengamer.com, ZenMarket, kgnuggets.com, Towards Data Science, and eventually HackerNoon.

While doing all that, I decided to start my own blog jpbound.com which publishes content about anime, Japan travel, Japan life, manga, games, and more.

In 2019, I started writing full-time for Lionbridge AI, a company that provides AI training data. This position truly helped me grow as a writer and now, a marketer.

This position led me to start publishing on HackerNoon.com where I now work as the VP of Growth and the Gaming Editor.

What university career/educational background prepared me for all this? LOL. I graduated with a BA in English - Creative Writing.

What's your startup called? And in a sentence or two, what does it do?

So it's weird for me to call it a startup, but I guess since I've gotten my first sponsor and technically this year am actually making money from this blog, I guess it is fair to call it that.

As I mentioned above, it is called jpbound.com or Japan Bound and we publish articles about Japanese culture and pop culture. We publish a lot of anime content, as well as insights about living and traveling in Japan.

My first ever blog was called gameversusgame.com and the idea was to compare 2 games and then let the readers vote on their picks and give their comments. It eventually failed, but I learned a lot about WordPress and managing a blog. So while the blog failed, it helped JPbound become more successful.

What is the origin story?

Well after my first blog failed, I realized there was too much competition with companies that had large teams and marketing budgets. My main advantage is my location: Tokyo, Japan. I can create content that other people can’t because of my life experience here, coupled with my marketing experience and SEO knowledge.

Deciding to start a website about Japan culture, Japan travel, and Japan in general, meant I could use the blog as an outlet for writing almost anything I wanted. I just did it for fun for a year, but then started to get organic traffic and hundreds of regular daily visitors. I found article templates that worked and started hiring freelance writers. I used contacts from my past freelancing gigs in Japan to land a sponsor and here we are!

If you weren’t building your startup, what would you be doing?

Playing games and exploring virtual reality. TBH I still spend a lot of time doing that. I also study Japanese.

At the moment, how do you measure success? What are your core metrics?

For us as a publication, we measure success based on organic traffic, and how many organic keywords we rank for.

For the sponsorship side of things, I measure success based on the number of impressions I can get for the sponsor and the number of click-throughs on their ads.

What’s most exciting about your traction to date?

I found a few low-hanging fruit keywords and took advantage of them to get my initial traffic push. However, the most exciting thing was realizing an anime review I wrote ranked above Rotten Tomatoes and IMDB.

This is a huge deal because Rotten Tomatoes and IMDB are THE authorities for any film or television information and reviews. Their Domain Ratings are 4 - 5 times the strength of Japan Bound’s.

It gave me a huge sense of pride and a sense of hope for the future of this blog. Good content is everything and I’m happy that Google sometimes feeds the little guy.

What technologies are you currently most excited about, and most worried about? And why?

100% it is VR. Play Skyrim on PS4 and then play Skyrim VR on Steam through the Oculus Quest 2 and you'll understand why.

But seriously, VR isn't just gonna change the face of gaming, it'll change education, real estate, virtual meetings, and more. I'm so excited for the future of this tech and the metaverse. But I'm worried about how much Facebook controls it.

P.S. imagine seeing that dragon up close in 3d breathing fire in your face^

That is what VR can do for you

What drew you to get published on HackerNoon? What do you like most about our platform?

On HackerNoon, I write mostly about AI, virtual reality, gaming, and writing.

What I love about HackerNoon is the recognition I get as a writer. Publishing on your own blog is great, but there is no 2 human rule with that.

Publishing on HackerNoon gives you validity as a writer and it boosts your portfolio to be able to say that I write on this website that gets millions of views a month.

What advice would you give to the 21-year-old version of yourself?

I would have said invest in bitcoin. But seriously, I'd say "have more confidence in yourself man and learn to appreciate what you already have because every chapter of your life is a gift and it has meaning. Of course, focus on your goals, but also enjoy the journey of getting there. Your life isn't just the milestones you reach, it's everything that happens in between".

What is something surprising you've learned this year that your contemporaries would benefit from knowing?

I've learned that there is a lot lost in translation on Slack and in emails. You can't convey tone well over text, so please try hard to convey tone well, add emojis, whatever it takes to make sure people understand what you're saying and don't take it the wrong way.

But for life in general, I learned that it is important to separate, at least in some way, your work from your personal life, so that one doesn't harm the other.

This is especially important if you're working remote 100%. You need to create boundaries for yourself and designate work time from non-work time.

Thanks for reading! Don’t forget to vote for Japan Bound for Startup of the Year in Tokyo

Want to nominate your own company for Startup of the Year?

Head to startups.hackernoon.com, search for your city, and nominate your heart out!