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The Indie Hackers Podcast

#264 – Growing a 2-Person Business to $80k/Month with Eric Turner of Japan Dev

56 min episode · 2 min read
·
Eric Turner Of Japan

Episode

56 min

Read time

2 min

Topics

Fundraising & VC, Marketing, Sales & Revenue

AI-Generated Summary

Key Takeaways

  • Cold start solution: Solve the job board chicken-and-egg problem by pitching companies first with zero upfront cost, performance-based pricing at 30-35% of salary only when they hire, making rejection nearly impossible while building supply before demand.
  • SEO page structure: Create separate landing pages for every keyword combination like "Python jobs Japan" and "PHP jobs Japan" rather than one generic page, plus write salary guides and relocation content to capture long-tail search traffic over 6-12 months.
  • Revenue model arbitrage: Japanese recruiting firms charge 30-35% of starting salary per hire, higher than US rates. Position as cheaper alternative by charging performance-based fees only on successful placements, eliminating company risk while capturing significant per-hire revenue without ongoing subscriptions.
  • First customer hack: Approach your current employer as initial customer since you have internal network access, understand their needs directly, and can easily reach HR. Use this brand name plus 2-3 others to create social proof that makes subsequent sales dramatically easier.

What It Covers

Eric Turner explains how he and his wife built Japan Dev, a niche job board for English-speaking tech workers in Japan, from zero to $83,000 monthly revenue with no employees.

Key Questions Answered

  • Cold start solution: Solve the job board chicken-and-egg problem by pitching companies first with zero upfront cost, performance-based pricing at 30-35% of salary only when they hire, making rejection nearly impossible while building supply before demand.
  • SEO page structure: Create separate landing pages for every keyword combination like "Python jobs Japan" and "PHP jobs Japan" rather than one generic page, plus write salary guides and relocation content to capture long-tail search traffic over 6-12 months.
  • Revenue model arbitrage: Japanese recruiting firms charge 30-35% of starting salary per hire, higher than US rates. Position as cheaper alternative by charging performance-based fees only on successful placements, eliminating company risk while capturing significant per-hire revenue without ongoing subscriptions.
  • First customer hack: Approach your current employer as initial customer since you have internal network access, understand their needs directly, and can easily reach HR. Use this brand name plus 2-3 others to create social proof that makes subsequent sales dramatically easier.

Notable Moment

Turner worked full engineering manager days, then started a second full workday building Japan Dev each evening for twelve straight months before receiving the first payment, nearly quitting multiple times during the revenue-free year.

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Episode Transcript

Hey. What's up, dude? What's going on, man? I am excited. I just got a a text on my phone. It says my, my new Meta Quest Pro is in delivery, so it should be here in a couple hours, I think. I would love to also be excited. My Meta Quest Pro was supposed to show up today, but for whatever reason, my card got declined. Like, the purchase got declined, and it also got declined right when I was landing in Arizona for a four day bachelor party for my friend. Perfect. So not only do I not get my Quest Pro, but I also was, like, on vacation on this group trip. This was, like, last Thursday. Right? Because I had the same Thursday. The same thing happened, not the bachelor party. But I got a a message from my bank that was like, hey. We got a sketchy charge from some company called Meta for $1,500. Like, we're we just went ahead and declined that for you. But, like, if it's a mistake, let us know. And I think what's going on is, like, no one is, like these credit card companies aren't used to people spending thousands of dollars on Facebook. Like, the typical stories of someone spent thousands of dollars on Facebook, they got they got scammed. They didn't buy a a VR headset. That's, like, the place where people go to scam people. Exactly. But I don't even know what's in this headset, man. Like, I was looking the reviews are out because everybody's getting theirs delivered today who ordered this thing. And, like, I literally don't know what the features are. I don't know what makes it better than the previous headset that I already have. I just know that it's, like, a new gadget. It's a new toy. I like VR, and so I just bought it. So I I do VR all the time. I do, I have the Meta Quest two, and I play a lot of ping pong. And I bought the Quest Pro I mean, you suggested it. You're like, oh, hey. This is out. And I was like, whatever. And I just bought it. And I had no excitement about it because I'm like, I was I thought it was only gonna be ping pong. But then I realized there's one of these meeting room apps. It's not the one that we do, but it's one that, like, allows you to have multiple different screens. And I went into it with the Quest two, and I thought it was really cool. But the problem is if you have, like, two or three screens, it's like the, like, the computing power of the Quest two isn't that strong. So it's, like, really grainy. It's really, like, laggy. You can't really navigate the screens very much. So I assume that the Quest Pro really lets you engage with a bunch of different screens, lets you do things where …

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