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EditorNinja: John Doherty on the Business of Content · Content, Briefly

• 0:00
  [ on-hold music] Hey, folks. Thanks for tuning in to another episode of Content Briefly. I'm really excited to have John Doherty on the podcast today.
• 0:14
  John has been working in the content and SEO space for a long time, and we do talk about his career more so than we typically do, but he got into SEO, gosh, 15 years ago.
• 0:25
  He worked at Distilled, very well-known SEO agency. He worked on SEO at Zillow and Trulia. He started a business called Credo, which was a lead generation business for marketing agencies.
• 0:35
  And today, he runs Editor Ninja, which is an outsourced editing service, and a Superpath partner.
• 0:41
  So John's been supporting Superpath in a few different ways for about three years now, so hugely appreciative of his support. And if you need editing help, go check out editorninja.com.
• 0:51
  This is not a paid appearance, but we like to support our sponsors. And anyways, great conversation.
• 0:56
  John's been in the business of content for a long time, and we talk quite a bit about that whole idea that, you know, basically that by the time a piece of content is published, it's been bought and sold, and people have been hired and vetted, and there's so much that happens before the content is actually created.
• 1:12
  So we spent some time talking about that and just some of the trends that John has observed in his time working in this business. So great conversation. Always happy to have a fellow Coloradan on.
• 1:22
  I think this is two in a row for us right now. And as always, great conversation. Hope you enjoy it. And before we dive in, just quickly, Superpath Pro has a couple of new things going on.
• 1:32
  One, which I have talked about already, is our free trial. This is something folks have been asking for a long time. It's now live on the site. Go to superpath.co.
• 1:40
  There will be a link to do a free trial if you are interested. In doing that, basically, you get access to everything that Pro members get access to for 30 days.
• 1:48
  That includes all of our courses and content, our monthly one-on-one calls, our 10, actually now 11 paid Slack channels. We added a new channel for AI discussions. Our monthly group calls, our weekly co-working sessions.
• 2:00
  There's so much going on in Pro, and part of why we wanted to create a trial is because, for the most part, only Pro members actually get to experience it. So anyways, we'd love to have you. 30 days free.
• 2:09
  Get the link, superpath.co, and we hope to see you there. Thanks so much and enjoy this episode. This episode is brought to you by our friends at Brevo. Looking to level up your marketing?
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• 3:04
  Hey, everybody. Jimmy from Superpath here today with John Doherty. This is long overdue, actually. John, you've been a partner of Superpath for a long time through your business, Editor Ninja. We'll talk about that.
• 3:14
  But you've been in content in one form or another, either working in-house, agency side, and then starting businesses too for a long time. So would you mind giving us an intro?
• 3:23
  Tell us a little about who you are and what you've been up to for the last, you know, 15 years. Yeah, 15 [laughs]... 16 years. Yeah.
• 3:29
  So hey, I'm John from Editor Ninja, formerly started a company called Credo, which is a lead generation company, which we'll talk about.
• 3:35
  Worked in-house for Zillow, worked agency side for an agency called Distilled, who was partnered with Moz back in the day.
• 3:41
  And actually before that, Jimmy, you might not even know this, I helped run a book publishing company from Switzerland for about a year. And I also started blogging in 1999.
• 3:49
  So that's dating myself, but I've been blogging for 26 years, writing on the internet. So content and, like, writing is my first love, just straight up. It-- I love writing.
• 3:57
  I- I'm one of those people that, like, I can't not write. Like, writing is how I get my thoughts out of my brain.
• 4:03
  So yeah, and honestly, I've been fortunate enough to build a career off the back of it, kind of, you know, some fits and starts, but been able to work with some awesome companies.
• 4:10
  So but yeah, these days, you know, I live in Denver, Colorado, have a wife and, and two young kids and a big dog, and spend a lot of time up in the mountains skiing up, up towards you, Jimmy.
• 4:19
  And yeah, run Editor Ninja, so we're a content editing and writing service. We've got about 20 bodies working in the business. Most of them are contractors, but editors, writers, ops, admin, all that sort of stuff.
• 4:30
  So it's a fun time doing it full time for a little over two years now. Nice. That's awesome. So much to unpack there. So you were writing on the internet 1999. Was it content marketing?
• 4:40
  I mean, did you identify it as that back then? It was the early, early days of blogging. Just like- Yeah... just super early blogging.
• 4:46
  It was a-- my first blog was a Xanga blog with an X, so a lot of, a lot of people listening to this probably have never even heard- [laughs]... of Xanga. It was like one of the first blogging platforms.
• 4:54
  So Xanga and then Blogspot, Blogger, and then in 2010, I launched my first WordPress website. Okay.
• 5:00
  So I've been on WordPr- I've been building on WordPress for about 15 years now, blogging on WordPress for about 15 years. Okay. But yeah, it was just, like, my own thoughts, you know?
• 5:08
  I mean, actually, funny enough, I was like, when I was, like, 16 or 17, this is like 2000, 2001, I had a very well-read theology blog, like Christian, like biblical theology blog.
• 5:18
  So I was interacting with, like, some big, well-known, like, names in that space. I'm no longer, like, affiliated with that space at all, personally or professionally. But had, like, John Piper, if anyone knows him.
• 5:28
  Like, he was, like, commenting on my blog. I was just this, like, 17-year-old, like, interested in this stuff.
• 5:32
  So I got my first, like, kinda taste of building an audience and all that then, so and I've just kept it going. That's really cool. I, I am curious about Distilled. So this is like 2011, 2012-ish, right?
• 5:43
  '11 through '13, yep. Uh. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, yeah. What was that like?
• 5:46
  I mean, Distilled, very well-respected SEO agency, and I, I remember their affiliation with Moz, 'cause at, like, at that time, I was, like, devouring everything that Moz put out, you know, the Whiteboard Fridays, and their blog was fantastic and all that.
• 6:01
  Yeah, what, like, what kind of work were you all doing at that time?Yeah. Yeah. So I got hired at Distilled in middle of twenty eleven.
• 6:07
  So I moved back from Europe in twenty ten, got a job for a digital agency, kind of a direct response marketing agency in Philadelphia as a link builder.
• 6:15
  They had some, like, owned, you know, properties, for-profit education space. So I was building links, but I have a web developer background as well.
• 6:22
  I kind of had, like, a, a concentration in that within my major at university in Virginia. So pretty good at technical SEO, could launch-- build websites and launch websites and all that.
• 6:31
  And then, you know, decent at building relationships, so, you know, could figure out the backlink stuff. So realized I'm-- I was pretty good at SEO.
• 6:38
  Didn't love that agency, was kinda ready to move on and, and got the opportunity to go work for Distilled. So I was actually hired there before Tom Critchlow, who started the office.
• 6:47
  Tom's br- older brother, Will, was one of the co-founders of Distilled, and they exited to Brainlabs in twenty twenty. But so that's like five years now and, like, literally a month before the pandemic.
• 6:57
  But, like, I was, you know-- ha- had not been affiliated with Distilled since twenty thirteen. But yeah, I was the first hire there before Tom even had a, a marketing, had a, a hiring budget.
• 7:05
  He hired me and then told the other co-founder that he needed a hiring budget 'cause he had just offered me a job. So [chuckles] I moved to New York, and dude, it was awesome.
• 7:13
  Like, two and a half of the best years of my life there. Like, you know, going to Mozcons and all the different conferences, got to blog on Moz, blogging on the Distilled site.
• 7:21
  We were working with awesome clients like, uh, TravelX, IHG, who's, uh, Holiday Inn's parent company.
• 7:27
  So I was their SEO consultant for about, leading that account for about eighteen, eighteen, twenty-four months, something like that. Yeah, and just got some really awesome experience, built a great network of people.
• 7:36
  And to be honest with you, I mean, we're twelve years on from that. It's been eleven and a half years since I left there.
• 7:42
  In a lot of ways, man, like, everything I've done since then has been riding off the coattails of, like, building that audience and building that name and now all the, like, blogging and speaking.
• 7:50
  I gave some Whiteboard Fridays. Like, I was, like, the person delivering, like, the, you know, Whiteboard Fridays a few times. I think I did three or four of those. Yeah, so, like, that was an incredible time.
• 7:59
  That was really, like, the accelerant to my career that kinda set me up for everything since. That's so cool. It's so interesting. One question about the technicality of the work you were doing. How technical are you?
• 8:10
  I mean, can you code? And how helpful have the technical skills been in your career? Yeah. So I'm fairly technical, I would say. Some of that is, like, definitely kinda atrophied over the years as I've done less of it.
• 8:22
  But, like, my first job out of college, I worked for an ASP.NET development, like, software company in the Washington, D.C., area. So learned to write SQL and could do a bunch of that stuff.
• 8:31
  I'm a halfway decent front end developer still.
• 8:33
  Like, at the Editor Ninja site, like, I, I mean, it's on WordPress, but, like, you know, I'm not a designer, so I paid a designer to design our, like, styles, but, like, I've built, you know, I've built that whole thing out.
• 8:43
  So yeah. I'm still, like, fairly, fairly technical, I would say. And it's really like, it's just served me really well, just, like, being a process thinker. Like, I run a pretty lean team.
• 8:53
  I've always run lean teams, like, at my various companies, and we're really able to punch above our weight with, like, the team size that we have.
• 9:00
  A lot of other companies would have, like, five, six, seven people, VAs in the, you know, in the Philippines, like, kinda, you know, doing all this, like, rote work, and I can automate it. So- Yeah...
• 9:09
  you know, and some of that's, like, no code, low code stuff, Zapier, like, that sort of stuff. But, like, HTML, CSS, PHP, you know, WordPress's version of PHP, like, that sort of stuff, I'm, like, fairly decent at.
• 9:19
  That's super cool. Very interesting. Okay, so then going back, so you're at Distilled, and then you go to Zillow and then Trulia. I would love to know a little bit about that.
• 9:26
  Like, to me, like, Zillow is, like, one of the most fascinating SEO plays ever. You know, it's like all of a sudden, every address in the world, or at least in the US at that time, has a landing page, basically.
• 9:37
  And, like, how do you start ranking for this, like, in s- unbelievably long tail, you know, probably low volume per page, you know, on the whole, the scale is just unbelievable.
• 9:47
  Like, I'd love to know about that experience. I think at the time when I was there, they had a hundred million pages in Google's index, something like that. So I was hired to run marketing at hotpads.com.
• 9:58
  So, like, a hot pad, like what you wear on your hand when you pull stuff out of the oven. Hotpads.com was their number two consumer brand at the time. So it was Zillow brand, zillow.com, and then hotpads.com.
• 10:07
  While I was there, we acquired Trulia as well. So basically, long story short, I was brought in to, like, be the marketer on hotpads.com and build out the team.
• 10:15
  Over the next about eighteen-ish, a little bit longer, months, I did that. So the team went from me to eight people, including myself.
• 10:22
  So I was doing SEO, and then kinda hi- and then hired email, content, link building, PR, and then eventually brought in an SEO manager as I just moved up to, like, managing the whole team.
• 10:33
  And then moved over to, to Trulia just for a few months. Got caught up in some post-acquisition drama and layoffs and, and got laid off in September of twenty fifteen and decided to go out on my own.
• 10:42
  But man, I loved working for Zillow. Like, the zillow.com exec team at the time were just, just incredible people to work with. Like, I learned so much from them.
• 10:50
  Their old CEO, Spencer, who actually just yesterday announced that he's the new CEO of Match Group, so over at match.com and, like, all those. Spencer is still, like, a mentor and, like, kind of trusted advisor of mine.
• 10:59
  You know, kinda catch up with him from time to time. And yeah, it was like, it was a great place to work.
• 11:03
  Like, I really learned a lot just about, like, kinda the politics of working in-house, getting things done in-house. Like, it was kinda early days of, like, the growth movement in San Francisco.
• 11:12
  Like, Andrew Chen had just written his, like, "Growth Hackers are the New VP of Marketing," like, famous blog article.
• 11:17
  And so, like, I forgot, we hired a designer and four engineers to work directly with myself and our email marketer to, like, do stuff on the site, 'cause otherwise we were, like, pulling, you know, product developers to do SEO stuff.
• 11:29
  And so, like, hired a, literally a product team, and it was at that point that I was like, "Oh, SEO should, in big companies, should be a product team 'cause it needs designers, it needs developers, it needs, you know, all of those people.
• 11:39
  It needs product managers. Like, treat it as a product." And I really learned that from the Zillow team, 'cause they were doing that.
• 11:45
  Like, Matt Bowers, who was the head of SEO at the time, he then led SEO at Zapier for a bunch of years, and now he's, like, a solo consultant.
• 11:51
  But Matt and the other SEO managers at, on the zillow.com brand team sat on a growth product team and had dedicated developers and designers and all of that. So I was like, "Oh, that's how this works." So-Yeah.
• 12:05
  I learned so much. I was there like two weeks shy of two years within like Zillow, Zillow Group. So it was a great time. It really was. Learned a ton, and really glad I had that experience. Yeah.
• 12:14
  It's so interesting how some of the early experiences in your career can shape so much of what comes later. And so you spent time in New York, in D.C., in the Bay Area also? Yeah, so D.C. for a year out of college.
• 12:25
  I spent two years in Europe living in like a hippie commune, and then the second year running a book coalition company from there.
• 12:31
  And then, yeah, Philly for about eight, eight, nine months, and then went to New York for Distilled, and so was there for about two and a half years. I met my wife there, and then we moved.
• 12:40
  I got the job with Zillow in San Francisco. So Zillow is based in Seattle, but the rental side of their business is based in San Francisco. So I got hired there, and then we moved to San Francisco end of twenty thirteen.
• 12:50
  We were there for three years, and then we moved to Denver. So yeah, kinda bounced all over, man.
• 12:55
  Well, it's just interesting to think about, like I'm just imagining someone who's like early in their career now, like that's probably not gonna happen. You know what I mean? You're probably gonna have remote jobs.
• 13:03
  You're probably not gonna have the in-person experience. I mean, let alone all the amazing personal experiences you probably had living in all those cool places too.
• 13:11
  Like my early career, twenty thirteen I went remote, and I've never been back. And I just, uh, I mean, it was a good experience in many ways, but I do sometimes wonder like what if I had gone to the Bay Area?
• 13:20
  What if I had lived in New York? You know? Like what experiences might I have had that I kinda missed out on, you know?
• 13:24
  I mean, there's definitely something to that, and even now, like running a remote company, like both of my companies have been remote, you know, almost nine and a half years like running my own companies.
• 13:32
  And I do sometimes wonder about that 'cause like, I mean, it was also-- When I moved to New York, I was twenty-six, almost twenty-seven. So like single, like newly single, actually.
• 13:42
  I'd just gotten out of a long-term relationship, and like just having that freedom to like do whatever the heck I wanted to do, you know?
• 13:49
  Like we'd be in the office till like seven thirty, eight o'clock working on stuff, and then we'd go to drinks, and then we'd go get dinner, and then we'd go get another drink, and I'd stumble back to my apartment at like midnight, wake up at eight o'clock the next morning and do it all again.
• 13:59
  You know? Like did that for years. It was so fun, and learned a ton, built some incredible relationships, you know. Like Rand Fishkin from Moz, I mean, Distilled was partnered with Moz.
• 14:08
  Rand would come to town, and one of the first stops he would make would be the Distilled NYC offices.
• 14:12
  So like we'd go have dinner, like, you know, and just built like incredible relationships that way, just like being in person. So I do wonder about that sometimes, you know.
• 14:21
  Also in a different stage in life with kids and like all of that now, and I'd much rather spend...
• 14:25
  You know, I was traveling to conferences all the time, and at this point I'd rather spend time building my companies and then spend time with my family and go skiing and all of that.
• 14:33
  So but yeah, for like the younger people, even still like, you know, if you're able to, you know...
• 14:38
  And people that get-- I got married at 30, so like, you know, people that get married younger, I recognize that like just is a completely different life than like what I had.
• 14:44
  But like if you're young and single, honestly, or like with a partner that's r- willing to move and you have the flexibility, like go to one of these major metros. Go to New York. Go to, go to Seattle. Go to San Diego.
• 14:56
  Go to LA, like somewhere like that. Come to Denver. Like we've got an awesome digital marketing scene here. If you're able to do it, like just those in-person relationships are gonna go really far. Yeah.
• 15:06
  And I imagine that's what set you up to then start your first business. Why-- Was it your first business, Credo? Credo was my first real business, yep. Yeah.
• 15:14
  So this is one of the reasons I'm so interested to chat with you about Credo and Editor Ninja. Like you've spent a lot of time in the, the business of content and of marketing.
• 15:23
  Like there's so much that goes on behind the scenes that makes, like by the time a blog post is published, like it's been bought and sold, people have been hired, there's infrastructure built.
• 15:33
  Like there's a lot that happens in order for that blog post to be published, and I feel like sometimes even the people writing it aren't fully aware of all of that.
• 15:41
  You know, so you've had this very interesting view of the marketing world over the last ten plus years building these businesses.
• 15:48
  So this is like v- very generalized, but like I'd just be curious like what you've observed in doing that. I mean, I wanna know about Credo specifically too, like what was the business, how did it go, et cetera.
• 15:57
  But like may- or maybe we can get to the part where it's like what are the takeaways of like the behind-the-scenes business work of content also? Yeah. Yeah, so I mean, Credo in a nutshell was a lead generation business.
• 16:08
  Lead generation agency really is what it was. It was productized in that we had like specific pricing and such. But lead generation business mostly for marketing agencies.
• 16:16
  Did a little bit of like web development leads and like that sort of stuff, but I started it in twenty thirteen as a side project, and then was kinda working on it a little bit twenty fourteen, fifteen while I was at Zillow.
• 16:27
  And actually it's funny 'cause people were asking me like, "Hey, what are you gonna do?" Like, "What's going on with..." It was called Hire Gun at the time, hiregun.co. I think I still own the domain name.
• 16:36
  But they were like, "What, what are you doing with that?" And I was like, "Honestly, it's a side project. I'm busy," right? I was newly married and busy job and all that.
• 16:42
  And then I got laid off, and my wife was like, "What are you gonna do?" I was like, [lips smack] "I think I'm gonna consult on SEO and see what Hire Gun can be."
• 16:50
  So long story short, and so rebranded it to Credo at the start of twenty sixteen and just started building it. Was consulting on the side as well.
• 16:57
  But basically, long story short, I ran it from, yeah, September of twenty fifteen to September of twenty twenty-two, and did some SEO consulting and such on the side until about late twenty eighteen when I went full-time on Credo.
• 17:09
  Brought in a business partner in twenty eighteen or twenty nineteen as well, and we actually built out like a, kind of like an escrow marketplace for a while.
• 17:17
  And then the pandemic hit, and we like cut that, kinda lopped the product in half, doubled pricing, just went to back to being a straight like lead gen model.
• 17:23
  Tried a bunch of different like pricing models and such, but yeah, but built it for, you know, a bunch of years, then honestly just like really burnt out on the business and had started Editor Ninja at the start of twenty twenty-two.
• 17:34
  But over the course of Credo, we generated a quarter billion dollars in digital marketing leads for agencies, made agencies over fifty million dollars, and I exited to private equity, like a micro private equity firm in l- literally seven years to the day that I got laid off.
• 17:50
  Whoa, really? [chuckles] So seven, yeah. It was like, it was wild. You know, like seven's like the number of completion like in the Bible and a lot of other religions and such. It was literally seven years to the day.
• 17:58
  So that was September twenty twenty-two. I was super burned out, didn't even realize it, and so kinda took that next quarter off, and then started working full-time on Editor Ninja in January of twenty twenty-three.
• 18:07
  ButYeah. Built Credo through SEO, content marketing, that sort of stuff. Some, like digital ads, but not a ton.
• 18:15
  But it was mostly just like I realized, like with my SEO and content background, I'm really good at building brands.
• 18:20
  I'm not as great at like the direct response stuff, and content marketing is not direct response marketing. I will die on that hill.
• 18:26
  But, uh, yeah, I realized I'm actually pretty darn good at building brands, and I can do that through SEO and content. Yeah. So interesting.
• 18:32
  So the Credo model, you have a bunch of agencies you partner with, and then companies who are in need of marketing vendors, they would come to Credo and say, "You know, these are the re-our requirements.
• 18:44
  Can you help us get matched up?" And then you help match them up with the right agency. That's so interesting. Man, what a cool business. Yeah. It was cool.
• 18:51
  You know, it was like the really real early days of anyone doing like lead gen and such. Like, no one else was really doing lead gen for like digital agencies at the time.
• 18:58
  You know, ended up with like Clutch and Digital Agency Network and like all of the... I can't even remember all of them, you know, anymore. But, uh, yeah, you know, competing against, you know, those.
• 19:08
  Mine was a, it was a small lifestyle business, you know. We maxed out around like mid-six figures a year. Forty-ish thousand a month is kinda where we like topped out and in revenue.
• 19:18
  But yeah, we were, you know, agencies were paying us to generate leads for them, and then we would get like basically a percentage on the back end once they closed. So tried various different like models around that.
• 19:28
  End of the day, like the pricing model we had there at the end just wasn't... It was broken, and I didn't have the, the energy to fix it. So, but yeah, it was a good business, you know, for what it was.
• 19:37
  You know, got me a great start, got me my freedom. Got a win at the end, and, uh, you know, and got a ton of experience that I've now taken on to the new business. So- Yeah... just let it grow quickly.
• 19:47
  Let's talk about the new business. What was the need that you identified that led you to start Editor Ninja? Yeah. Couple.
• 19:54
  One was-- Really the big one was I was doing all the blogging on Credo still, and I was publishing stuff that wasn't finished.
• 20:02
  It had errors, it had typos, it had unfinished thoughts, like that sort of stuff, and I was like, "Geez, I need an editor." And, my-- I just hired an executive assistant. Her name is Sophia.
• 20:11
  Sophia is now Editor Ninja's head of operations. And so Sophia started editing for me, and then I had people asking me about, uh, about it, and I was like... Actually, no, back up.
• 20:21
  So I really decided to launch Editor Ninja because Sophia was on board. I started the business in 2020, like March, April of 2020, because the pandemic had started. I saw a lot of people getting laid off.
• 20:32
  I needed an editor for my content, but also like other people were asking me about it, and I was like, "Well, I'm pretty good at like generating demand for like services, right? So like might as well give it a shot."
• 20:41
  Sorry, I'm bouncing all over the place a little bit. I'm, I'm trying to remember in real time.
• 20:44
  But basically, like, it did, I don't know, a couple hundred bucks in revenue in 2020, and then 2021, you know, I had people occasionally contacting me, looking for work, had kind of a group of 50 or so editors I'd reach out to.
• 20:56
  And someone would agree to do it for what I could pay, and they would do it, and, you know, I'd get paid through PayPal, and I would pay them through PayPal.
• 21:02
  And then in November of 2021, I was starting to really burn out on Credo, and I looked, I was like, "I wonder what Editor Ninja did this year."
• 21:09
  I was kinda looking for something new and kinda knew the Design Pickle, like on-demand slash unlimited model.
• 21:14
  And Editor Ninja had done $1,000 in revenue that year, and I had maybe worked on it 15 hours that whole year, and I was like, "Well, that's interesting." [laughs] So I formed the business entity at the end of 2021.
• 21:25
  I remember sitting at my cabin up in the mountains.
• 21:27
  I bought, you know, formed the entity, bought the EI, got the EIN, all that stuff, and launched it on January 7th, 2022, and by the end of that day, had $1,000 in MRR because I had two people that were interested in, in signing on, and it's just kinda grown from there.
• 21:43
  Yeah. [laughs] That's so cool. So today, Editor Ninja is it... H-How do you describe it? Is it outsourced editing? Is it on-demand editing? It's outsourced editing and content writing. So most of what we do is editing.
• 21:54
  So we have k-kind of two different offerings. One is the on-demand slash unlimited model. It's kinda tiered based off of how many words you have per month, and we kinda back that out into like number of articles.
• 22:03
  Average length blog article is about 1,200 words that comes through. But at this point, I mean, you know, the editorial content blogging world, like that volume has gone down significantly over the last couple of years.
• 22:13
  So a lot of what we do is we edit a lot of AI content, a lot of AI generated content, services, pages, that sort of stuff, and that comes through our system.
• 22:20
  And we also have a dedicated editor offering, which is basically like a placement model.
• 22:24
  So companies that come to us, like usually larger enterprises, but some bigger agencies and such, that they're like, "We need an editor or editors, um, but we also need them to work within our, our systems, like Asana or whatever."
• 22:34
  And so we just sell them basically a bank of hours, 75 bucks an hour. And, you know, 10... We've had s-some companies doing over 100 hours a month, like paying us for over 100 hours a month of editor time.
• 22:44
  So we focused more on that over the last six months, and that part has grown really well.
• 22:48
  And then we write like SEO-focused blog articles, both human-written and AI generated, but with a human, like writing and editing layer on both of those. So yeah. Super cool.
• 22:57
  Superpath was actually a, a customer for a while through our marketplace, which has changed. It used to be that we would deliver the content. Now we broker the relationships with the writers.
• 23:05
  That's right, yeah, and, and we deliver the content [laughs] not for y'all, but for other clients, so yeah. Right. It's a different, it's a different model.
• 23:11
  So we have like agencies that are doing, you know, we have one agency that's doing 30, 40 articles a month through us, and they're about to grow significantly, and we've had others that it's like four articles a month, eight articles a month, like that kind of thing, so.
• 23:22
  Yeah, yeah. One thing I loved about working with Editor Ninja is that we automated so much of it, so like we would get drafts in. We would automatically send them to Editor Ninja.
• 23:33
  Everything would get sent back, and then it would automatically get sent to the customer, and it was the beautiful system. I think that was probably what eventually led to us partnering up.
• 23:42
  So you've been a Superpath partner for, gosh, I don't know, two years maybe? Year and a half. It's been a, it's been a while, yeah. I think it was 2022. I think it was about two years ago. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. That's right.
• 23:49
  Well- Yeah... we're very appreciative of that. If people need editing- Of course... go to editorninja.com.
• 23:52
  So earlier I'd asked you kind of like a sloppy question about [laughs] what, what's the, you know, the business of content? Like, what have you learned?
• 23:58
  And I'm-- I guess one thing I was sort of getting at is like how has it changed since you launched Credo in 2015? Like, what are the...
• 24:05
  Like if you had to kinda like hone in on like a couple of big trends, you know, what are those things, and, like, how has your work changed to...
• 24:13
  And, and the, the businesses you run, how have they adapted to some of those changes?Yeah, it's a great question. I also don't know that I've done a great job of adapting to some of it. I've done...
• 24:23
  In some ways I've done a really good job of it, in other ways I've done a, a not great job of it. How has it changed? So when I started working full-time on Credo in twenty fifteen, it was still like...
• 24:32
  It was probably like the, is waning when the moon is getting smaller? I think so. It was the waning time of blogging, but blogging was still very popular, and people were writing a lot and people were reading a lot.
• 24:43
  Instagram was, you know, definitely, like, a thing, but it was, like, static photos, right? They didn't have, like, reels or stories or anything like that. So content was way more effective.
• 24:53
  You could find people to write, people were reading, people would share, right? People so Twitter was still a thing, and people would share widely on there and have good conversations.
• 25:01
  Comment sections were still a thing. Like, it was very interactive. We were all kind of building our own, like, digital ecosystems, digital gardens, as my friend Tom C- uh, Critchlow calls them.
• 25:10
  But that doesn't exist now. So yeah, what I've seen happen is companies that are willing to produce, like, bigger stuff, right? Like Credo, we had a digital marketing agency pricing survey.
• 25:20
  So I think I was really the first person to make transparent what agencies charged and for what, and at what sizes and locations and that kind of thing. You do that now for the, like, content, right?
• 25:31
  Like, freelancers and such, like the salary survey. That study, which we ran, I think I first did the first one in twenty sixteen, and then seventeen, nineteen and twenty-one, so I did it four times.
• 25:41
  That study probably made me two million dollars over the course of the business.
• 25:44
  It maybe not that much, pro- it probably didn't make up half of the total revenue that we generated, but it was, like, probably a solid twenty, twenty-five percent.
• 25:51
  Just 'cause people would discover there, and then they'd be like, "Oh, like, I can afford that," and then they'd contact us and we were connecting with agencies, right? Like, pretty, pretty clean funnel there.
• 25:59
  So, like, companies that are willing to, to invest in that sort of stuff kind of create a brand in the space of, like, helping people succeed. Those like, that's what works in content these days.
• 26:09
  But what I see is, you know, in the past it was like, write blog article, publish blog article on your own blog, tweet it out, bunch of people would share it.
• 26:16
  I mean, it was not uncommon to get like hundred, a hundred fifty, two hundred people like retweeting something that I just published, you know? And p- and that amplification just doesn't happen these days.
• 26:25
  Like, it's a lot more work. You know, you gotta do some visual, you gotta chop it up, you gotta put it on YouTube, you gotta put it on Instagram, you gotta put it on TikTok. Like, it's just a ton more work.
• 26:32
  It has to be more visual. And honestly, like, I've not done a great job of keeping up with that, to be completely candid. And, you know, I often think about, like, should Editor Ninja, like, our...
• 26:42
  I'm fortunate that our brand, I try to launch brands and brand names that are general enough that we can adjust with the market. So I wonder about, like, should we do video?
• 26:51
  Should we do, like, graphics, like that sorta stuff? At this point, we're laser focused just on, you know, like, the written word. And I've got kinda some tricks up my sleeve to, to try to make that, like, go faster.
• 27:01
  But yeah, there's just way less, like, content out there. And even in the last two and a half years, right? Like, I sold Credo in September of twenty twenty-two.
• 27:10
  I basically took that next quarter off, and in the middle of that quarter that I took off, ChatGPT launched and just changed the game. Changed everything, yeah. Uh, changed everything.
• 27:19
  So yeah, I mean, you know, we got to probably three hundred, four hundred thousand words a month of like mostly blog content, and now we're around a million words a month and seventy percent of it is AI-generated content.
• 27:28
  So just the need has changed. You know, not to be like too nostalgic, but like if you wanted to read a blog now, like how would you even find it? [laughs] You can't. It's so different out there. Like, nobody...
• 27:39
  One, nobody writes them, you know. And two, like, there's not like a built-in distribution mechanism that, I mean, email newsletters, I guess, you know.
• 27:48
  I, I do wonder if there will be a resurgence of that style of writing and that people will figure it out. You know, there's Substack, there's other platforms that people could use to distribute that type of work.
• 27:57
  But I do wonder if that will be maybe a silver lining of, you know, closed social platforms, AI-generated content, like maybe people will be attracted to like pure editorial work again. I hope so.
• 28:09
  I mean, I think the people like myself, like, so my wife and I are planning a trip to Mexico in about six months to a- an area that neither of us has been to.
• 28:16
  And I was doing some research about it, like, you know, what to see and where to stay and, like, that sorta stuff. And I found some blogs written by, like, individuals and, like, that sorta stuff.
• 28:25
  And the thing is, like, I think people like that, the people that got into, like, blogging and content sites and that sorta stuff because they saw a way to make money, they're gonna fall off and they're gonna go do something else, and that's fine, right?
• 28:34
  That's totally fine. Like, they, they got theirs and they succeeded for a while and then now the game has changed, they're gonna go and do something else.
• 28:39
  But there is a subset of us, I can include myself in this, that as I said at the top, like, I can't not write, you know?
• 28:47
  So I think, like, these travel bloggers and such that, like, they love to travel, but they can also support themselves through, like, blogging and that kind of thing, I think there's still a place in the world for them.
• 28:56
  I really do. At least I want- Yeah... to believe that. And my recent experience of, like, researching, like, I found, you know, six different travel blogs about Puerto Escondido, Mexico.
• 29:05
  And, like, they had interesting stuff to say.
• 29:06
  And I still went to, like, TripAdvisor and places like that, but, like, I wanna read about their real experiences and, like, who's the surf coach that I should hire and, like, that kinda thing, you know?
• 29:15
  Like, friggin' TripAdvisor and places like that aren't gonna tell me that.
• 29:18
  Like, I want someone that they're like, "I went to this place and I went out with this guy, and he was awesome, and he costs thirty-five dollars an hour, and you should definitely book him for a day." Great. Yeah.
• 29:28
  I will book that guy. That's awesome. You know? Right. But from the business side, I don't know. Actual, like, building, like, a B2B business, like, I think it's bigger content.
• 29:35
  I think it's bigger resources and e-books and, like, really just, like, building a brand and providing outsized value in that way. So maybe it's less volume, fewer blog articles, but more, like, bigger, bigger stuff.
• 29:46
  Like, if you could drop a really good study or really good e-book or something once a quarter, do that for a couple years, and you're gonna be doing pretty well, especially for like, like a, you know, lifestyle sub $3 million a year business.
• 29:59
  Right. Right. Yeah, small sample size, but, like, the type of stuff that I write for the Superpath blog is mostly stuff I just like writing about, you know.
• 30:05
  And, and it, it's interesting, I find, like, anytime I get on calls with folks, they're like, "Oh, I read your article about, you know, your twenty twenty-three year in review, your, uh, the thing about how you bought your business partner out.
• 30:15
  Like, the lessons you learned by trying and failing at this or that."
• 30:19
  [laughs] You know, it's like, that's like old school type blogging, but, you know, the scale of it, it doesn't reach that many people, but I do find that-People remember it, like, to a remarkable degree, actually.
• 30:28
  Totally. Yeah. Yeah. I do the same.
• 30:30
  Like, we used to do a lot of, like, more like SEO content on Editor Ninja, and I realized, like, we were building our traffic numbers, but I was dubious about whether it was really adding a lot of value to the business 'cause I couldn't really trace back leads and, like, that sort of stuff.
• 30:44
  And then Google's, like, algorithm update back in like August or September, we lost 30% of our organic traffic, and my leads went up [laughs]. Really? Oh, that's interesting. Up, yeah. [laughs] It was crazy.
• 30:58
  So I'm like, "Well, I guess I was right," like, my hypothesis was right. This wasn't really adding, like, much value, you know, to the business. So I mean, I do think there is still value to it.
• 31:06
  I see people that, like, land on our, like, whatever, proofreading marks article, for example, which gets, like, a lot of traffic.
• 31:12
  Then they go to, like, they look at pricing and they look at, like, how Editor Ninja works, and they end up on our, like, editorial assessment, like, intro call page and, like, that sort of stuff. So, like, I think...
• 31:20
  I don't think the people are unqualified, but my effort's also, like, better spent other places. Like, I don't really prioritize content, and when I do, I'm doing the stuff that you're talking about.
• 31:30
  It's, like, the stuff that I'm interested in, and, like, thought leadership stuff. I think that's what's gonna, like... That builds the brand which builds the business. Yes. Please keep doing that.
• 31:39
  I'm gonna keep doing it, too. We're gonna pave the way.
• 31:41
  I was just reading, like, your article that you just published about, like, lessons learned about, like, pricing and packaging and all that stuff, and I was like, "Yes, I've learned that, too.
• 31:49
  Yes, I have learned that, too." Yeah [laughs]. "Oh, I have lessons to share here." [laughs] Right. You keep doing it, too. I will. I will. I'm committed one article per week all year. That is my commitment.
• 31:59
  John, so good to talk in this format. Like, we've talked a number of times over the years, but never had the chance to kinda get the full story and learn more about the businesses, so I really appreciate it.
• 32:08
  And Editor Ninja, again, has been a wonderful partner to Superpath. If you're in need of editing or content, check out Editor Ninja. We'll make sure there's a link in the show notes.
• 32:16
  And then where else can we send people? Your LinkedIn or anywhere else? Yeah, LinkedIn is probably the best for me. I'm on Bluesky as well, johnfdoherty.com. Have myself authenticated there. But LinkedIn is...
• 32:27
  I mean, it's kinda replaced Twitter for me. Like, I haven't even logged into Twitter in, like, a month now. So yeah, LinkedIn is where I'm sharing, especially, like, content related stuff.
• 32:36
  You know, some, like, hot takes and that kinda thing, but, you know, other also advice around, like, building content teams and pricing your services and that kinda stu- like, I, I love that stuff.
• 32:44
  And then, yeah, my email is john@editorninja.com. And then let me also, if I can, let me kinda tell, we have what I call the Editor Ninja Talent Network.
• 32:53
  We used to call it our extended network, but I have a lot of freelancers and agencies coming to me being like, "Hey, are you hiring copy editors? You hiring writers?" Like, that kind of thing. So I send them there.
• 33:02
  It's editorninja.com/apply. It's where you can apply to join the talent network.
• 33:06
  I then vet everybody out, have conversations like, you know, Zoom conversations, whatever, with some people as well, just kinda learning who's who in the space. It's kind of where we tap.
• 33:13
  You know, if there's, like, a specific need, you know, specific industry or specific type of editing or something, we'll occasionally tap people from there and, and kinda work with them on specific projects.
• 33:22
  But we're starting to offer more, like, webinars and workshops and that kinda thing there as well. So go apply there if you're a, you know, freelance writer or content agency or something like that. Go apply there.
• 33:31
  You know, as long as you're, like, legit, you have a filled out LinkedIn profile, you can show good work samples, like, that sorta thing, like, you're gonna be approved.
• 33:37
  We have about 375 approved people and agencies, and there's mostly freelancers at this point, and that's out of about 700 that have applied. So we approve about 50%.
• 33:46
  And yeah, and I, I'm looking to help, you know, help those people really grow their businesses, you know. Like, I f- I firmly believe rising tides lift all ships, so that's kind of a push for me this year. Yeah.
• 33:56
  That's awesome. All right, cool. We'll make sure that there's a link to that in show notes as well. John, thank you for the time. Thank you for your partnership, and, uh, hope we can do this again sometime.
• 34:05
  Thank you, Jimmy. Take care. [outro music]