quietmoneyMai-ko
The official site of MAIKOYA, for booking cultural experiences in Kyoto and Tokyo: kimono tea ceremonies, maiko/geisha performances and interaction, kimono rental, and samurai/ninja museums.
GLOBA K.K., a KOne-line growth story, compiled by us from public sources; speculation is marked separately below.
Checkout visits over time
Checkout: checkout.stripe.com
1. Productwhat it sells, to whom, and how it charges
- Product
- The official site of MAIKOYA, for booking cultural experiences in Kyoto and Tokyo: kimono tea ceremonies, maiko/geisha performances and interaction, kimono rental, and samurai/ninja museums.
- Users
- Foreign tourists visiting Kyoto and Tokyo who want to experience traditional Japanese culture (mainly American tourists)
- Positioning
- Run directly from physical stores, headlining a tea ceremony experience that has been a Tripadvisor Travelers' Choice for many years, while pulling in search traffic with a large number of geisha/Japanese culture explainer articles
- Pricing
- Booked per experience, one-off; specific prices not found Billing: one-time Free tier: no
- Team
- small team
- Acquisition entry points on site
- press coverage
- Price source
- mai-ko.com
“Book Now; featured in top travel documentaries and visited by celebrities”Quote from the site
2. Channelswhere new users come from and what the traffic looks like
New-user source: SEO (Non-brand search). Half of new customers come from non-brand search (about 49.6%), with culture explainer terms like geiko, geisha, seppuku and ninja, drawn in by the site's explainer articles; brand keywords are 37.8% and paid search 7.6%. Referrals come from travel content sites such as globa.info and redhairtravel.com (about 1% each); social includes Reddit, Facebook and YouTube. Tourists mostly book once, and direct visits at 37.8% are mostly people coming back to order after browsing.
Last month's traffic sources
Top channel measured by Similarweb, others estimated by rank
Five-class attribution
| Attributable new users, last month | Share |
|---|---|
| SEO | 50% |
| Other | 50% |
Direct + brand search 38%. Direct and brand search count as viral only when the site shows sharing mechanics; the largest share wins, under 5% means Other.
Countries
| Country | Share of visits |
|---|---|
| United States | 32.84% |
| Australia | 5.07% |
| Japan | 5.02% |
| United Kingdom | 3.96% |
| Switzerland | 3.22% |
Language
Mostly English, plus a Japanese version
Social sources
Reddit, Facebook, YouTube
Keywords
2.7K keywords · brand ~38% · organic 80.51% / paid 19.49%
| Similarweb top 5 keywords |
|---|
| geiko |
| geisha |
| seppuku |
| ninja |
| were they also blind geisha |
Non-brand queries: geiko, geisha, seppuku, ninja, were they also blind geisha
Referring sites
6 referring sites
| Site | Share of referrals |
|---|---|
| globa.info | 1.25% |
| redhairtravel.com | 1.01% |
| ninjafoodtours.com | 0.59% |
Referrer categories
| Category | Share of referrals |
|---|---|
| Search Engines | 35.38% |
| Travel and Tourism - Other | 8.65% |
Site metrics (Similarweb, last month)
- Visits, last 3 months
- 257K (3 months)
- Visits MoM
- -16.4%
- Country rank
- United States #112547
- Category rank
- Travel and Tourism - Other (US) #1292
- Bounce rate
- 40.8%
- Pages / visit
- 3.26
- Visit duration
- 00:01:55
- Industry
- Travel and Tourism
- Top 3 channels
- Organic Search › Direct › Paid Search (top channel 49.58%)
3. Growth pathhow the first users arrived and what kept it growing
Classification
Basics
Timeline
Growth loop
Revenue and scale clues
Confidence and gaps
Other sites that started via “Institutional distribution”
Similar sitessame category, also growing via SEO
FAQ
How many checkout visits does Mai-ko get per month?
About 8,596 last month (Similarweb estimate), #459 of 606; the month before was 0. Opening checkout is not paying, so this is not revenue.
Where do Mai-ko's new users come from?
New-user source: SEO (Non-brand search). New users mostly come from need-based searches Half of new customers come from non-brand search (about 49.6%), with culture explainer terms like geiko, geisha, seppuku and ninja, drawn in by the site's explainer articles; brand keywords are 37.8% and paid search 7.6%. Referrals come from travel content sites such as globa.info and redhairtravel.com (about 1% each); social includes Reddit, Facebook and YouTube. Tourists mostly book once, and direct visits at 37.8% are mostly people coming back to order after browsing.
How much does Mai-ko cost?
Booked per experience, one-off; specific prices not found
Dossier confidence: medium. Parts 1 and 2 come from reading the site and Similarweb data; part 3 from public reporting, founder posts, Wayback snapshots, WHOIS and similar, with speculation marked.
The number: checkout visits is Similarweb's estimate of visits from the site to a checkout payment page; opening checkout is not paying, so this is not revenue. Small sites land on fixed buckets.
Data through last month. Page updated 2026-10-26.