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TL;DR
Nina is an ER nurse who was $150,000 deep in student loans. On August 5th, she launched a 53-page Japan travel guide on Stan Store for $45. Within two hours, she passed her $10,000 goal. Two weeks later, she hit $85K in sales. Now, three weeks after launching, she’s paid off over $100,000 in debt from her guide.
Nina Fuji is a Seattle-based ER nurse who has spent the last year posting online, sharing her experience as someone who’s half Japanese and has traveled Japan extensively.
She’d never monetized her content before, but the weight of juggling a rigorous full-time nursing job, content on her days off, and $150,000 in student loan debt was becoming challenging. So on August 5th, Nina packaged everything she knew about Japan into a 53-page travel guide and put it on Stan Store for $45 with a goal of earning $10,000.
Three weeks later, she’s made over $100,000—with a new goal to pay off her student loan debt in full by the end of the month. But to understand how she got here, let’s rewind.
Posting Between ER Shifts With $150K in Debt
Nina started posting on TikTok and Instagram one year ago after one of her friends told her she thought she’d be good at it, and that people can make a lot of money on social media.
”I have SO much student debt and life is expensive in Seattle, so I figured I had nothing to lose (except for maybe being a bit embarrassed that my friends would see).”
At first, Nina didn’t know where to start. Nursing content seemed overdone. Japan content felt oversaturated. And when she tried making her dog famous to avoid showing her own face on camera, it didn’t work.
So she began talking to the camera about her identity being half Japanese, which people seemed to resonate with. She’d post videos speaking “Japanglish,” brain-dump everything she knew about visiting Japan, and share relatable stories about being biracial.
Before long, Nina was hooked and having so much fun with it. And her audience loved it, too. Over the next 12 months, she built an audience of over 276,000 followers in between ER shifts.
But behind the scenes, paying down $150,000 in student loans was weighing on her. She decided to try monetizing the audience she’d built to chip away at what she owed, little by little.
Turning a Lifetime in Japan Into a Guide
Nina had never sold a digital product before, but the one thing her audience always came to her for was Japan. She was born there and had visited dozens of times, so whenever someone started planning their own trip, they’d ask her the same questions like:
- What apps should I download before landing?
- How do the trains work?
- Which etiquette rules are actually worth knowing?
She always had an answer ready—it just never occurred to her that people might be willing to pay for it.
So when it came to creating her first offer, she turned her audience’s questions into a downloadable travel guide full of everything she knows about Japan: a checklist of the apps to download, Japanese phrases worth memorizing, etiquette and restaurant rules, transportation logistics, and the little things no guidebook ever mentions. 53 pages in total, written the way she’d explain it to a friend.
She set up a waitlist on Stan Store to start collecting leads as she created it—choosing Stan for its simple setup and 0% transaction fees, so every sale went straight toward paying off her debt.
On August 5, she launched the guide for $45. She publicly shared her goal of hitting $10,000 in one month and was candid about why she needed the money—to chip away at six figures in debt.
In the weeks since launching, she’s continued to share updates on her progress, bringing people behind the scenes of her first digital product launch.
The Result: Over $100,000 of Debt Paid Off
Nina blew past her initial $10,000 goal in two hours. Within four days, she’d made half of her annual nursing salary. She realized the initial goal she set for herself wasn’t big enough, so she set a more ambitious goal of $150,000.
Two weeks in, she’d sold 2,186 copies of her guide and made over $85,000. Three weeks post-launch, she hit 2,500 copies sold—bringing her total sales to over $100,000.
And new sales keep coming in every single day. With one week and less than $50,000 left to go, she’s on track to hit that goal (and probably exceed it).
What felt like a distant dream a few weeks ago is Nina’s new reality, all because she decided to bet on herself and turn what she already knew into a digital offer.
“I’m just so incredibly grateful that so many people trust me enough to spend their hard-earned money on something that I created.
I’ve always been a bit insecure about my writing. I struggle to organize my thoughts (thanks, ADHD). And I hesitated to do ANY of this because it always felt like there was someone else that could do it better. I still have tons of imposter syndrome, but every day it gets a bit more real that I did this all by myself—and I’m quite proud of myself.”
What’s Next for Nina
Nina started all of this to get out of debt, then ended up with an audience, a product people love, and a story that keeps bringing in new followers. With a majority of her debt paid off now, she’s figuring out what she wants to build next—with a lot more financial freedom to do it.
“This guide exploded in a way I did NOT expect, so now I suddenly have an LLC, a new manager who is so supportive and excited about my future, and SO many ideas!!! New website! Merch! New people I’m working with! I can’t wait.”
She’s excited to go back to Japan more often, expand her travel guide, and continue her Small Business Saturdays series, where she features other small Asian-owned, women-owned, and queer-owned businesses.
Nina has no plans to give up nursing. But after experiencing how quickly an audience can turn into a real business, she’s leaning deeper into content creation—a path she never would’ve imagined for herself a year ago.
Sitting on knowledge people keep asking you for? Put it on Stan Store and keep every dollar you earn—just like Nina.
Instagram 
TikTok 
Stan Store 
