Pretty good year?
This site started in order to help people living in Japan by providing information and support so that they could learn about personal finance and invest for the future.
That is still the purpose.
Along the way RetireJapan grew into a community. The members of this community provide the real value by sharing their knowledge and experience, by telling people about the site, and by providing feedback and suggestions.
I’m really humbled by the contributions of some of our regulars, and hanging out with everyone is definitely the most enjoyable part of running RetireJapan. I’m pretty sure I have gotten much more out of this site than anyone else has 🙂
Engagement
We have a lot more readers now. This is due to current readers telling people about the site (thank you!), being featured in media like The Japan Times and Metropolis Magazine, and doing events and guest posts.
The weekly email list is probably the easiest way to follow new blog posts (apart from maybe RSS) and you can sign up easily at the bottom of the page. In December 2016 we had 281 subscribers and today we have 610.
The Facebook page has 767 followers (don’t have historical data for this).
Weebly tells me we have over 60,000 monthly pageviews on the site, but I’m not sure I believe them. Google says just over 11,000.
Community
We set up a new forum this year, because the old one was really hard to use. I think the new one is a big improvement. It’s much easier to find content and see new posts now.
On the forum we have 151 members and 868 posts. It’s probably the best place to get an answer to a specific question or to ask for advice.
Creation
2017 was the year when multiple projects came off the back burner and went in the oven 😉
We published not one, but two RetireJapan guides! I’m really excited about having the chance to go a bit deeper with people and help them get their financial plans sorted out.
Future
So what is next for RetireJapan? I’ll be writing about that in the 2018 post on January 3rd 😉
In the meantime I’d be really grateful if everyone could continue spreading the word. I estimate there are still hundreds of thousands of people in Japan who could benefit from the information and community in this site who don’t know about it.
I’d also love to hear your suggestions and comments. What can we do that we’re not doing right now? What do you want more of? What problems do you have?