#30 - Three things people who exceeded 200,000 yen per month in side income quietly stopped doing
You can reach 50,000 yen per month with a side hustle. But you can't seem to grow beyond that.
This is a common side hustle experience. You complete tasks on Lancers. You sell skills on Coconala. You manage social media on weekends. If you work hard, you can make 50,000 to 100,000 yen a month. But you just can't break through the 200,000 yen barrier. Even though your working hours increase, you even get the feeling that your hourly rate is decreasing.
On the other hand, overseas, there are plenty of people who earn not just 200,000 yen, but 500,000 or even 1 million yen a month in side income while working as company employees. Moreover, they aren't working 80 hours a week. In fact, their working hours are decreasing. There is a certain number of people who earn the average annual salary of a Japanese office worker in a single month, using only 1-2 hours on weekday nights after their main job and half a day on weekends.
So, what is different about them?
The answer lies not in what they 'did,' but in what they 'stopped doing.' The difference between those who stop at 50,000 yen and those who exceed 200,000 yen was not whether they acquired new skills, but whether they were able to discard several old habits.
This time, I have organized 'what people who exceeded 200,000 yen per month stopped doing' into three points by directly accessing content from overseas practitioners—newsletters like Side Hustle Nation and The Hustle, interviews on Lenny's Podcast, and personal accounts on YouTube.
The 200,000 yen barrier is a 'time' barrier
The reason side hustle income hits a ceiling can be summarized into almost one thing.
Because you are selling your time.
If you work 10 hours a week at an hourly rate of 5,000 yen, that's 200,000 yen a month. It works out in theory. But in reality, you can't work during weeks when your main job is busy. If you get sick, it becomes zero. If the projects stop, your income stops too. Moreover, the hourly rate for side hustles rarely goes up, even if it goes down due to competition. This is because you are being estimated on the same playing field as low-cost labor from all over the world on crowdsourcing platforms.
In other words, the hourly-rate model is structurally designed to hit a ceiling around 200,000 yen. It's not that there is a wall; it's designed to stop there. The only way to cross the wall is to switch from a 'time-based model' to a 'results-based model.'
What overseas side hustle practitioners commonly say is, 'When I switched from an hourly model to a system-based model, my income stage changed.' Once you build a system, one hour of work thereafter can generate the value of 10 or 100 hours. People who exceed 200,000 yen a month, without exception, have made this switch at some point.
What they stopped doing #1: Stopped 'selling time'
Becky, who appeared on the Small Business Big AI podcast, is a former Big 4 consultant who became independent after being laid off. What she chose was a 'Fractional COO' model—taking on management duties as a part-time COO for multiple small and medium-sized enterprises.
—A fractional COO is an external management advisor who comes in only a few days a week. It is a way of working that has been expanding rapidly, especially in the U.S. over the last few years, between small and medium-sized companies that don't have the budget to hire full-time and experienced former executives who don't want to be tied to one company.
The point is that instead of dedicating 100% of her time to one company, she has monthly retainer contracts with three companies simultaneously. By making full use of AI tools (ChatGPT, Notion AI, Make.com), she is doing the work that used to be done by a team of six all by herself. What Becky said on the podcast was, 'The moment I changed my billing unit from time to project, my monthly income doubled.' She was working the same amount of time, but her income jumped just by changing what she was selling.
According to Becky, she is achieving an annual revenue of $360,000 (approximately 54 million yen) while working 35 hours a week. *Statement made during the podcast. The corresponding data has not been verified in the primary source.
This is a shift from 'selling time' to 'selling results.' Compensation is generated not by how many hours you worked, but by what you solved. This switch is the first step to crossing the 200,000 yen barrier.
What they stopped doing #2: Stopped 'doing it yourself'
Nick Loper, founder of the Side Hustle Nation podcast, has been sharing information about side hustles since 2013. He runs a newsletter and podcast with over 100,000 subscribers and has interviewed side hustle practitioners in over 600 episodes to date.
What Loper repeatedly emphasizes on his podcast is that "successful people do not try to do everything themselves."
Writing articles, posting on social media, replying to inquiries, bookkeeping, sending invoices, renewing domains—if you do all of this yourself, you will never have enough time. Many people whose side hustle income hits a ceiling at 50,000 yen a month find that these chores pile up alongside their main job, leaving no time for the essential "earning activities."
What people who have exceeded 200,000 yen a month have in common is that they have separated "things only they can do" from "things that can be left to a system".
By using AI tools, individuals can now automate tasks that once required hiring others, such as drafting articles, analyzing data, standardizing email replies, issuing invoices, and providing initial responses to customer inquiries. It doesn't have to be perfect. Even 60% automation is valuable if it frees up your time. Rather than aiming for 100% and continuing to do everything manually, creating a 60% system first and using the saved time to focus on earning will help you break through the 200,000 yen barrier much faster.
Thing Quit #3: Quit "Trying to Earn Immediately"
Justin Welsh, a former executive at ZocDoc and PatientPop, left his corporate career in 2019 and chose the path of a solopreneur, sharing content primarily on LinkedIn. He currently generates approximately $4.15 million (about 620 million yen) in annual revenue with an 86% profit margin, zero employees, and a business centered on educational content and a newsletter. *Revenue figures are based on numbers disclosed in Welsh's LinkedIn posts and various interviews.
What Welsh repeatedly emphasizes is the message: "Keep posting for the first 12 months, even if no one is listening." He himself says that for the first six months, his LinkedIn engagement was almost zero. It took several months to reach 1,000 followers and about a year to launch his first paid course. Throughout that time, he kept calmly sharing free insights.
"What I quit was getting impatient looking at the numbers," he says on a podcast. He explains that the moment he switched his focus from "today's reaction" to "the impression left after 12 months," the content of his posts changed, and the quality of his readers changed as well.
Successful newsletters like The Hustle and those on Substack share a common pattern. They do not use ads or monetization for the first 12 to 24 months, only starting to charge once their readership reaches thousands or tens of thousands. It is a strategy of building up a balance of trust with readers first.
People who have exceeded 200,000 yen a month treat the first 3 to 6 months as a "trust-building period." They don't try to earn immediately. They provide value first and get people to think, "This person is useful." Monetization comes after that.
If you rush to monetize, you end up selling to people with whom you have zero trust, and ultimately, you don't make sales. There is a common understanding that the path that looks like a detour—"providing value for free first"—is actually the shortest route.
Welsh also says this on another podcast: "Keep sending your newsletter every Saturday. At first, it's 100 people, after a year it's 10,000, and after three years it's 100,000. It's the same work, but the scale adds a zero each time." The effort in the first year might only look like 100,000 yen worth, but by the third year, that same effort turns into 30 million yen worth. Whether or not you can believe in this non-linearity is another secret behind the 200,000 yen barrier.
The Growth Path: "Hourly Type → System Type → Asset Type"
When you organize these, many people who have exceeded 200,000 yen a month follow the same growth path.
Stage 1: Hourly Type
Selling your skills directly. Writing, design, consulting. High immediate cash flow, but it doesn't scale. Most people stop here.
Stage 2: System Type
Creating things that can be sold repeatedly once made. Paid articles, templates, online courses. This also includes monthly subscription models. This is where you break through the 200,000 yen barrier.
Stage 3: Asset Type
The system itself becomes an asset. Reader lists, communities, brands. Loper's newsletter has the "asset" of over 100,000 readers. The Hustle was eventually acquired by HubSpot in 2021, growing to have an asset value of $17.2 million (about 2.6 billion yen) in cash alone, and even more including stock. *Figures are based on HubSpot's SEC filings and TechCrunch reports.
Many successful people build funds and track records in Stage 1, build systems in Stage 2, and convert them into assets in Stage 3. You don't need to aim for Stage 3 right away. You can start by getting a "feel for earning" in Stage 1.
What is important here is not to skip stages. Even if you skip Stage 1 and start writing a newsletter immediately, you won't have the content to write about. The specific problems you gain from dealing with customers in the field become the material for product design in Stage 2 and the core of the brand in Stage 3. For most people, the 3 to 6 months of Stage 1 become the starting point for their entire side hustle when they look back on it later.
Conversely, the common trait of people who get stuck at Stage 1 is that they do not take the 'first step of switching' to Stage 2. It is true that there is a sense of security in continuing to accept the same projects every month, but that sense of security is the very essence of the 200,000 yen per month barrier.
The same structure can be used in Japan
This growth path can be applied directly in Japan as well.
The current state of the side hustle market in Japan
According to the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications' Employment Status Survey (2022), there are approximately 3.05 million people in Japan who have a side hustle (an increase of 600,000 from five years ago), and approximately 4.93 million people who wish to have a side hustle but have not yet done so (an increase of 930,000). Combined, there are about 8 million people in the 'have a side hustle / want to have one' category. A survey by the Persol Research and Consulting Co., Ltd. shows that the number of companies allowing side hustles has increased to about 60% of the total. Since the COVID-19 pandemic, the ban on side hustles has been lifted rapidly even at major companies from the perspective of work-style reform and securing human resources.
On the other hand, the most common average monthly income from side hustles is 50,000 to 100,000 yen. It is said that less than 10% of all side hustlers earn more than 200,000 yen per month. In other words, the 200,000 yen per month barrier certainly exists, and exceeding it means 'entering the top 10%.' Moreover, the faces of this top 10% are not all people with special talents. Many of them are simply people who started the switch from 'hourly wages to systems' at an early stage.
Comparison of Japanese platforms
| Platform | Stage | Suitable for | Commission |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lancers / CrowdWorks | Stage 1 (Hourly type) | Selling skills directly | 5-20% |
| Coconala | Bridge from Stage 1 to 2 | Templates or easily commercialized skills | 22% |
| note paid magazine | Stage 2 (System type) | People who can write | Approx. 15% |
| LINE Official Account | Stage 2 to 3 | People who want to have a customer list | Monthly fixed + usage-based |
| Stripe direct billing | Stage 3 (Asset type) | People who can have their own sales site | 3.6% |
The difference in commissions significantly affects long-term profits. In Stage 1, there is value in borrowing the customer-attracting power of a platform, but from Stage 2 onwards, it is more advantageous to shift to your own customer list and Stripe payments. If someone earning 200,000 yen per month on Coconala switches to Stripe direct billing, it is calculated that more than 30,000 yen per month will remain in their pocket just from the difference in commissions. That is 360,000 yen per year. Ignoring this difference and continuing to pay a 20% commission is one of the reasons why people cannot sustain earnings of 200,000 yen or more per month for a long time.
Fractional work—there is potential in Japan too
Becky's 'Fractional COO' model can also be realized in Japan in the form of 'advisors' or 'external consultants.' In particular, there is an increasing number of cases where small and medium-sized enterprises request external experts for DX promotion, marketing, and financial management for 100,000 to 300,000 yen per month.
A survey by the Professional & Parallel Career Freelance Association in Japan also shows that a certain percentage of freelancers answer that 'advisory contracts with multiple companies' are their main source of income. The shift from the 'hourly type,' where you work 10 hours a week at an hourly wage of 5,000 yen, to the 'results-based type,' where you sign advisory contracts with three companies for 200,000 yen per month, makes an income level of 600,000 yen per month realistic. Moreover, the 10 hours of work per week remains the same. The only thing that changes is the billing unit.
In terms of side hustles, a combination of three marketing advisory roles for small and medium-sized enterprises at 50,000 yen per month each, and two fractional SNS management roles at 80,000 yen per month each—this sales line of 310,000 yen per month is fully achievable through personal sales activities and existing networks. Just by registering on job sites like 'Pro no Fukugyo' or 'Another works,' inquiries from companies are increasing.
What is missing is information on 'how to do it.' Overseas, know-how on systematizing side hustles is shared almost every week via podcasts and newsletters, but it is hardly distributed in Japanese. That is precisely why the information asymmetry between individuals who have touched primary information in the English-speaking world and those who fight only with Japanese side hustle books appears directly as a difference in income.
30-day action plan to exceed 200,000 yen per month
How should someone still in Stage 1 (hourly type) spend their first 30 days to transition to Stage 2 (system type)? The approach commonly recommended by overseas practitioners is as follows.
Week 1: List all tasks of your current side hustle and color-code them into 'things only I can do' and 'things that can be systematized.' If the latter accounts for more than 50% of the total, the transition to a system type is fully possible. The trick to not making a mistake in judgment here is to categorize them by 'things only I can do' rather than 'things I can do faster.' These two things seem similar but are decisively different.
Week 2: Choose one thing from the 'things that can be systematized' and turn it into a template or automate it. Standard email response text, quote formats, delivery checklists, invoice templates, etc. It doesn't have to be perfect. Start with 60%. Just by having one prompt ready for ChatGPT, you will definitely free up 1 to 2 hours every week.
Week 3: Use the time freed up by systematization to create 'content that becomes an asset.' A paid note article, template sales, or the first issue of a newsletter. Create one thing that 'can be sold over and over again once made.' The first one doesn't have to be perfect. The act of releasing it itself becomes a mechanism to elicit feedback from readers.
Week 4: Release the product you created and aim for the first sale. One sale is enough. The fact that 'there are people who pay for what I made' will become your conviction for Stage 2. How you move after making one sale will significantly change the next 30 days.
What you can do today
Write down all the tasks for the side hustle you are currently doing on a single sheet of paper. Next, take a colored pen and circle only the things that "only you can do." The rest are "candidates for systemization or outsourcing." If the tasks that were not circled make up more than half of the total, you can break through the 200,000 yen per month barrier. First, choose just one of them and turn it into a template that lets ChatGPT or Notion AI handle the first draft by the end of this week. A task that takes 30 minutes to finish will start to change your income 30 days from now. The room for growth in a side hustle lies not in increasing new projects, but in discarding the tasks you are already holding onto.
The established theory that it takes five years for overseas trends to reach Japan is now quietly collapsing. This note is a place to translate and deliver English-language podcasts and primary information into Japanese. Do you want to know late, or do you want to know first? That is all it comes down to.
Reference Information
・Side Hustle Nation — Case studies and podcast for side hustle practitioners (run by Nick Loper, since 2013)
https://www.sidehustlenation.com/
・The Hustle — Business trend newsletter (Sold to HubSpot in February 2021. $17.2 million in cash + stock, total over $20 million according to Sam Parr)
https://thehustle.co/
・TechCrunch "HubSpot acquires media startup The Hustle" (Acquisition report, 2021)
https://techcrunch.com/2021/02/04/hubspot-acquires-media-startup-the-hustle/
・Justin Welsh Official Website — The Solopreneur Business / The Saturday Solopreneur
https://www.justinwelsh.me/
・Mr. Welsh's appearance on Lenny's Podcast — He explains his own solopreneur building process
https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/a-look-inside-justin-welshs-portfolio
・Small Business Big AI (Podcast) — Case study of Fractional COO Becky
・Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications "Employment Status Survey" (2022) — Number of side hustlers and those wishing to have a side hustle
https://www.stat.go.jp/data/shugyou/2022/
・Persol Research and Consulting "Survey on Corporate Practices Regarding Side Hustles" (2024)
https://rc.persol-group.co.jp/thinktank/research/
・Professional & Parallel Career Freelance Association "Freelance White Paper" (2024)
https://www.freelance-jp.org/freelance_whitepaper
※ Figures for overseas cases are from each individual's official website, podcast, or news articles. Exchange rate is estimated at 1 dollar ≒ 150 yen.
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