TokyoSpark
Eats & sights in Tokyo + Japanese language made "easy"
Rather than write, write, write... I've pivoted the focus of TokyoSpark to "sparks of knowledge" designed in carousels.
These carousels break down a topic into 10 or less slides -- in a succinct, focused manner.
These sparks are crafted in Adobe Photoshop and are a blast to create! I love crafting these -- where writing was becoming a challenge.
I'd love to hear your thoughts.
In exchange for sharing as much knowledge as I can, now have a writer helping me craft articles for TokyoSpark!
She's amazing and the best part is the push to add more and better content is renewed.
I wish I could make 10 clones of her!
This experience and also given me some new insight into how I want to grow TokyoSpark long term -- i.e. how I might grow a team and automate/assign certain tasks that will allow me to focus on strategy.
Going to be some great times coming up.
If you're following along with the traffic gains of TokyoSpark, you'll notice May was far less than April. It was about half the traffic.
That's because I did zero social media sharing and the traffic is 100% organic.
I decided to stop sharing so much at this time and focus on organic -- the long-term.
Google Search Console is showing almost double impressions month over month. So this is fun. :)
Well, there isn’t any copy on the page yet. I don’t actually plan to make any sales yet even.
But the first artwork is now technically available for purchase.
It’s a piece based on the torii gates at the Fushimi Inari shrine in Kyoto, Japan.
The technical steps to make purchasing possible are done. Now to make the page appealing. :)
TokyoSpark is now 100% free to use.
I’ve moved into a content play and will use discrete ads, relevant affiliate offers, and my own digital products to monetize.
With traffic on the verge of growing quickly, I can better focus on helpful, rich content that will grow traffic more and more over time.
This also frees up server resources, time spent coding, and support time.
More to come soon!
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Hey Chad, I've just moved to Tokyo and your site is very helpful — cheers for making it!
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Welcome to Tokyo. :)
Glad you found it helpful. Anything I can do to make it better for you?
Thanks!
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It would be cool if you could get a lot of the recommendations onto a map. A lot of the time I tend to decide what to do based on distance from my location.
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Sorry for the delay... I made some really dumb mistakes and killed my organic traffic. Oops. 🤪
I added a map of pins to all the places discussed in the Roppongi article.
Curious what you think: https://tokyospark.com/roppongi-akasaka/#34-Map-of-Everything-Discussed
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Nice one, seems useful. The key thing for me is getting access to the map on my phone to directions which this does :)
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For me, on TokyoSpark, I use:
uigradient
flatuicolors
Compressor
Pexels
Pixabay
Unsplash
Adobe Photoshop
Feedly
Grammarly
Google Cloud Natural Language
HikeSEO
Google Search Console
Google Analytics
MailerLite
Zapier
Google Docs
And of course, WordPress for my site - hosted on Closte - Google Cloud Platform + LiteSpeed Web Server.
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I always set up these things in development:
- Trello
- Google Docs
- Calendly
- Flaticon
- Fontawesome
- Pexels
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Oh, how could I have forgotten Trello!
Fontawesom... I used to use it, but lately
I feel like I can’t justify the he pads load hit for a couple icons.I backed FontAwesome 5 Pro too. Maybe I should look into adding them locally so I can use them inside Photoshop.
Never really had a need for Calendly, but it looks nice.
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We've been really happy with some new tools:
- Clubhouse: Project management / kanban
- Slite: Great alternative to Google Docs
- Airtable: Great alternative to Google Sheets
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Never heard of most of these. :)
I’ve never found a great use for Airtable, though it looks awesome.
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If you're interested in NLP you may take a look at https://indico.io/ They have a very accurate and free API you can use to analyze text and do a lot of fun stuff, this is just a personal preference because I used it before in a personal project. Nothing wrong with GoogleNL.
To answer your question, here's the tools I use on a regular basis:
- Toggl
- Github
- IFTTT
- Spendee
- Mailchimp
- Firebase
- Calendly
- Wave Accounting
- Google Analytics
When I first started TokyoSpark it was basically just a blog. Then I focused purely on eats and sights -- hand-picking and researching restaurants and places to go in Tokyo -- and delivering it to subscribers via a paid email newsletter.
But I recently made a huge shift.
No more paid newsletter. All this content is free. There is still a mailing list, where I'll still email the readers all the newest eats and sights.
But the subscription grants access to exclusive Japanese language courses built using advanced cognitive science methods to make learning Japanese "easy."
That shift just happened. I'm still reviewing the content that used to be inside an email newsletter and optimizing it for the web experience (and SEO so it can rank).
The goal is to diversify revenue into ads, affiliates, and the subscription (where subscribers will also get an ad-free experience).
My gut instinct tells me this is the right path now. Casts a wider net, should pull more traffic from Google over time, and hopefully, help people who want to learn Japanese discover my courses.
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I think you are on the right track.
The paid newsletter was a nice to have but I don’t know if it was solving a problem.
A course to make learning Japanese easy is definitely solving a problem! ✌️
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Thanks @andreabosoni!
I think in the back of my mind I know I should have done this a couple months ago.
Then again, I would probably never have focused on the email side at all -- and that would likely have lagged far behind -- if it got started at all.
This way, while a bit harder, I have RSS email automations setup so I don't have to craft every single email I send -- they get created as I create content on TokyoSpark.
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So on March 1st I released the first iteration of my subscription offer on TokyoSpark -- where I would email a weekly newsletter of hand-picked eats and sights in Tokyo.
And got one subscriber immediately!
I've since changed the offer from weekly newsletter to access to exclusive Japanese language learning courses.
I haven't started marketing much just yet -- have a few content shifts I need to make, and then I'll be ready to, hopefully, reach some new milestones soon.
Well... it all started way back.... no, just kidding.
I think the primary reason is I wanted to create a service that didn't just push out as much content as possible but spent time crafting content that very specifically helped people enjoy Tokyo.
I guess I grew tired of the "15 Amazing Soba Shops in Downtown Tokyo!" and then the article is a pile of Instagram photos, tiny amounts of actionable info, and the reset ads.
And then I also teach Japanese to visitors, trying to help them learn enough Japanese to better enjoy Japan -- so I wanted to build Japanese courses using my style (and some awesome brain hacks I learned in Yale Medical cognitive science courses).
Plus a little part of me was curious if little old me could create a site that ranked well enough in Google to pull decent organic traffic. :)
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