A quick summary of the media that I have been appearing in of late.
Was in yesterdays Nikkei Sangyo Newspaper talking about this site and how the contents, community and technology involved have lead to a modest income through affiliate services like Amazon Associates and Google Adsense etc. I didnt go into detail regarding exactly how much I make but decided to be open about the most I made in a single day last December (about 100,000 yen). I also mentioned that my income from online activities has made enough for me to pay for our house, bills, food and figures ^^;
Some companies approach me offering cash to review their services or products for them. I talk about how I dont do that because by accepting money, I would be obliged to write something good even though I thought the product or service sucks - to me this would be lying to my readers. I do continue to accept free figure samples but dont guarantee a good review ^^; latest free samples are Haruka and Fauna (pictured here) ^o^
There are many services cropping up in Japan who pay bloggers to write stuff. For example, Sony would have a "the first 500 people to write a review for this product gets 300 yen" type thing. Through these "pay to blog" services, many are starting to wonder about the legitimacy of info in blogs. In Japan, people have always had a tendency to rely on the information in blogs as it was a "human" writing their views as opposed to a corporate company flogging their goods.
