An AWS engineer dissects their own bill for a personal blog with zero articles that cost 14,000 yen per month.
I lost 40,000 yen before I even wrote a single blog post. 🫣
The number of published articles is zero.
Hello, I'm EBE.
My previous post was about my 'second failure': a self-built blog featuring authentication, Stripe payments, and the Claude API.
Today, I'm going to reveal and dissectthe actual AWS bill for that project.
It peaked at $95.10 (approx. 14,000 yen) in one month, with a six-month total of $283.44.
Please, have a laugh at my expense. And then, use this bill as a learning tool for yourself.
*Amounts are estimates based on an exchange rate of 1 dollar = 150 yen.
*If you are new here, please start from the first and second posts.
First, let's look at the evidence.
$283.44 over six months. A monthly average of $47.24. The number of services used was23.
I'll say it again: this is for a blog with zero articles.
Here is the monthly breakdown.
It started from almost zero in January, picked up in February, andpeaked at $95.10 in March.
After that, it gradually decreased, andin June it was $0.55.
The shape of this mountain represents my six months of 'building, coming to my senses, and dismantling'.
Where is the culprit? Reading the breakdown of the peak month.
When I first looked at this breakdown properly, I honestly thought, 'There must be some mistake.'
But I was wrong.
Every single line was a charge for a feature I had added myself.
I was obsessed with adding features, thinking that building them was an asset in itself. I also viewed the costs positively as 'tuition fees,' so I didn't pay much attention to them at the time.
But looking back, I was adding features I had no plans to use just because I thought I 'might need them someday,' and I was letting my future visions run wild.
This was exactly the kind of failure common in personal development where 'the act of building becomes the goal.' 💦
In my FinOps work, when I look at a bill, I first categorize items into 'fixed costs' and 'variable costs.' It's like distinguishing between rent and grocery expenses.
Breaking down the March breakdown:
RDS ($58.60), App Runner ($14.17), WAF ($7.00), VPC ($3.72), Secrets Manager ($1.60).Almost all of this is rent.
In other words, this bill isn't high because I used a lot of resources.
It's high because a fully equipped server fleet was standing by 24 hours a day, even though no one was visiting.The primary culprit is RDS: a 6,000 yen-per-month database that was dutifully running every day without a single article or a single member.
Who said 'building it yourself costs 500 yen a month'?
In my previous cost comparison table, I wrote 'DIY: approx. 0–500 yen/month.' You're probably thinking, 'Doesn't that contradict this bill?'
It doesn't contradict it. What I built wasn't a blog.
I only wanted to write a blog, but I ended up building a web service.
Blog(posting articles for people to read) → A static site is sufficient.A few dozen to a few hundred yen per month
Web App(has members, payments, and AI running) → Needs a DB and an execution environment.Rent starts to accrue
While saying I was 'building a blog,' I added authentication, connected Stripe, and integrated the Claude API. Each of thosefeatures summoned a new fixed cost.one by one.
The price of over-engineering wasn't just time.
It amounted to 14,000 yen per month—14 times the cost of a rental server (1,000 yen/month).While claiming 'DIY is cheap,' I was essentially burning through 14 months of Xserver fees every single month.
So, how much did it cost after I dismantled it?
The bill for June, after dismantling, was **$0.55**. All that remains is the Route 53 domain maintenance fee. 14,000 yen/month → 80 yen/month.
This difference was entirely the 'price of over-engineering.'
By the way, the February bill included about $15 for 'Registrar'—the annual domain registration fee. In other words, looking back over the last six months,the only fixed cost I truly needed was the $15 annual domain fee.one could say.
So, how much does it cost to build it correctly per month?
Now that I've gone through two failures, if I were to build the same 'personal blog' from scratch, this is the configuration I would use.
S3 to host the articles (a few yen/month), CloudFront for delivery (effectively $0 within the free tier), and Route 53 for the address ($0.50/month + $15/year for the domain). Total: around $1/month.
Even annually, it's about 4,000 yen including the domain. **Even if traffic increases, it only grows gradually based on usage; there are no standby troops charging rent. My previous '0–500 yen/month' figure refers to this configuration.**
What if you really need authentication or payments?You can just add them then.
What to do starting today: 3 steps to reading your bill
If you are already running something on AWS or another cloud, just do these three things today.
Open Cost Explorer by month (Those who have never looked at this are in the most danger)
Sort by service and identify the top three (In my case, RDS, App Runner, and WAF)
Ask those three: "Do you really need to be running even on nights when no one visits?" If the answer is no, that is rent you can cut.
If you haven't built anything yet, go to the second diagnostic. **If your goal is to write, go to note. If you are building, limit it to three features.** This bill is the entire reason why.
One book on AWS cost management and cloud design.
In conclusion
This 40,000 yen was an expensive tuition fee. But it was not a waste.
Thanks to it, I can now explain the difference between "over-building" and "building only what is necessary" down to the dollar.
If you read this article and thought, "I might be doing the same thing," please open your cloud bill just once.
There might be features sleeping in there that you added for the future, but that you don't actually need right now.
Series: "Textbook before starting a side-hustle blog"
Preview: There is a continuation to this story
I lost 40,000 yen on this blog. But the "sharing" I started at the same time brought me returns that cannot be measured in money. It changed the conversations with interviewers during my job search, the sharing itself was evaluated, and as a result, I received offers from four companies. I am preparing an article for my next paid post that reveals everything, including the numbers, about how "blogs aren't just about revenue." Please follow the magazine and stay tuned.