📝 $547K ARR editing words

Simple straightforward agency business doing $547K ARR.

Editors editing words for content creators.

As AI content grows, the need for human editors will grow along with it.

EditorNinja is a great example of how to build a business around this growing need

Solving Problems

EditorNinja by John Doherty helps content agencies and in-house marketing teams produce content at scale.

It helps them polish their content and make it perfect right before they hit publish.

Without having to hire a full time editor, or haggling with unreliable freelancers.

This from EditorNinja’s “Use Cases” page.

Love how the copy right before the CTA focuses on the pain points and fears of their ideal customer persona.

Pain leads to action.

Early Challenges

But their ideal customer persona was not this obvious right from the beginning.

Editor Ninja is a 2 year old business now, and one of the biggest challenges in the early days was figuring out WHO they served and what problem they solved for them.

John explains here -

Early Growth

John got his very first customers by talking about EditorNinja within his personal network.

He hacked together the initial MVP just with NoCode tools - Wordpress + Gravit Forms + Zapier + Paypal.

Sustainable Growth

After initial success from his personal network, EditorNinja has doubled down on SEO for it’s growth.

It’s clear from their organic traffic chart and their blog that they have been consistently investing in data driven SEO strategies over the last year or so.

They’ve been getting traffic for a very interesting set of keywords. I’m working a deep dive report on the SEO strategy that EditorNinja is using, will release it for Indie Masterminds members soon. Make sure you sign up.

Learning from Peers

Networking with other entrepreneurs at a similar stage as you is always an insightful experience.

John was able to predict the rising demand for content editing when he heard about people playing with AI content for their businesses.

He attended a mastermind in Costa Rica where he realized that soon a signifcant part of their work would be AI content.

Top Lessons

Top lessons from Editor Ninja’s success -

• Start before you’re ready, be scrappy and launch your product.
• Initial growth will happen from your personal network - so build an audience, go into communities, talk about your work every day.
• Try, fail, iterate and keep going till you dial down who exactly is your ideal customer
• Focus on your customer’s pains in your copy and landing pages.
• Sustainable growth comes from predictable channels like SEO
• Learn from your peers - join communities, attend masterminds and networking events.

Further Reading -

• Two Years In The Market - John Doherty
• EditorNinja on IndieHackers

Building your first landing page?

This structure is a good place to get started.

It gets every crucial aspect of your product out on the page

Makes it good enough to show to potential customers

You can then iterate with time and test things out. More in this tweet.

From the vault -

3 random post from the Superframeworks archives -

• $291K a month teaching backend courses
• New Creator Economy Ideas and Opportunities
• 4 ways to get valuable feedback for your projects

🔗 Super Links

Useful links you don't want to miss -

• THIS is the best business model in the world - Codie Sanchez
• Why building an audience doesn’t work for SaaS - Jason Cohen
• My No-Code stack for Indie Masterminds - me
• 21 brutally honest lessons about life - Alex Hormozi on Modern Wisdom podcast - YouTube
• Augmenting Human Creativity with Ayush - My micro-SaaS Elephas got featured in the Ness Labs newsletter this week.

Last week’s top link -

• Don’t do 12 startups in 12 months, do this instead - me

🤗 How can I help?

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Surround yourself with better people 🤷🏻

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