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Greg Heilers on the business of HARO outreach at scale.
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[00:00] Sure hi everyone uh this is tan your host at the SIA business and uh in today's episode um I I I thought we will try to do something different uh we have greg here from the jolly um SEO company um and hi greg how are you I'm good Irfan how are you man I'm good I'm good it's it's so good to have you here so uh just a bit of a backstory for the listener viewers um I and greg basically uh started uh some interaction in interactions
[00:34] On an fs facebook group uh regarding SEO and backlinking and you know it was I mean there is there is some things that we do very differently and then there are some things that which we sort of in common so um we thought we speak on a call and then you know we basically suggested that we can have it as an episode on on the sie business podcast and you know greg and his team can share it as well on their end as well so greg thank you so much for being here
[01:05] I'm very excited to you know exchange notes and and and um I'm very curious about uh how you do things and if you have encountered some of the problems that we have had and I'm sure you have a few uh questions as well um so should we get started greg yeah yeah likewise thank you for having me and I'm curious as well so let's go for it sure sure um so greg uh I believe you're from from this but you are based pretty close to me so
[01:30] I'm based in pakistan and and you are currently based in china yes that's right right right so how long have you been in china or do you uh visit um quite often or well in a normal year you know we're filming this at the end of 2020 uh in a normal year we split our year my is from china so we're here to see her like bring our kids and get exposure yeah to chinese culture but you know this year we're staying here it's a it's a good place to be
[02:04] And then we're heading back to the us next month which I'm a little nervous about I'll admit yeah yeah I can understand but hopefully uh things will get better so greg I mean um what did you used to do before jolly I mean how started jolly and and and how did you get into SEO if you can get some details about yeah I I started working online about seven years ago now actually it was meeting my now wife is the reason I started working online so I used to work
[02:39] Hands-on in like agriculture uh uh and you know obviously my life is different now spending every day on a but I fell into it because I met my wife while traveling and she said if you want to be with me come to china and as you know it's one of those countries where english is a so I started using it to write to edit for companies and then I became a content writer and I never made it into copywriting but I found this this horror uh
[03:18] Experience that we're gonna dive into which yeah is it's short form but it pulls on the content you know I have a history degree it pulls on the the research side of content writing so for me it was a really interesting fit to to switch over to short form but still it's content it's still yeah yeah and and I guess I guess it's it's it's kind of different as well then sort of typical writing because you're trying to get the attention of journalists and bloggers and and they
[03:50] Usually want something um you know comparatively quite brief but but you still want to provide value and be persuasive yeah you're right about persua there's like an element of direct response right like it's not a sales letter but there is an element it's got to be a little sexy and yeah for sure yeah and and so uh when did you set up jolly um yeah we so I have a partner at jolly morgan taylor he's my friend from high school uh and we actually when we were still content
[04:28] We started jolly content at the time we had these huge projects like we did four on-site pages for groupon.com um we you know big projects and that was thanks to morgan's suggestion but then we spent two years struggling as a content agency really tough for anyone who knows the content world especially for us because we didn't have the strategy to really command those high rates so we technically started jolly about almost four years ago but really our focus on HARO has been since that's when we pivoted we shut down the
[05:12] Content side and just exclusively went into hara right right um I think I think we discussed this uh privately as well uh you know in a previous discussion I think in our case it was like I'm not sure if it was late 2017 or late 2018 um but I think in that in sort of that uh for for two or three months I think um did not earn any links you know um for the initial two or three hours I um and I think that's where a lot of
[05:43] People sort of get discouraged you know when they don't get a link they think it doesn't work and you know uh maybe maybe greg is paying someone or if one has a friend at decision or something you know did you did you had a similar experience experience initially with harrow yeah and so you know we jolly since mid I personally freelanced it for six months prior before we made that call so we had that track record but of course for my first months it was experimental for those clients
[06:15] And we set up the compensation to be pitch plus performance you know so that there was some security on both sides but that's definitely the most common I'm sure you've seen it in SEO signals lab everywhere people talk about HARO they say I sent 20 pitches this platform doesn't work so I stopped I mean first of all they don't notify you about like 95 percent of the wins so you know but second of all there's a delay of up to five months for some of the bigger publications
[06:50] Yeah and third there's a real conversion ratio as you know you know from running a crew like you gotta factor that into the whole margin of running a business that you don't convert one out of one pitches so that's my biggest advice to people starting horror is you you can't stop like you can't stop after 20 pitches and say it doesn't work it's like a lot of things in life you got to keep going yeah yeah absolutely and and um so uh in in our case
[07:19] It's it's um performance based from I think pretty much day one so we have never charged for pitches but I do um that you know obviously I mean how do you deal with the problem so right now it's performance based for you guys right now strictly on the client side but yeah but internally with our team we we have a hybrid just because you know I was a freelance writer for five years I sympathize like yeah what freelance writer is gonna join my team they're like who the hell is
[07:48] This guy that wants to explain me on success only three months later exactly and and so we have the same system as well where our team they they get paid by the hour and and we try attract their their data and so on uh but then we pay them higher the higher the DR of the backlink is the higher is the um commission which is I think the same as you guys right well we pay we pay per pitch and you know obviously we're in different
[08:16] Countries so like things are a little like you got to compare but that's really interesting to charge hourly we we had a team member suggests at one point maybe I'm diving too far so pull me back yeah that's to do something yeah you know to to do something like that and they suggested how have a role on the team that assigns out the queries to each writer says like you're going to hit these queries you're going to hit these you're going to hit these uh but we we never went that route at
[08:48] Least not today so yeah you just pay per pitch yeah and and I am I'm actually experimenting with the per page model with with I I hired um so we hired two vas and and we started with it with them on a per page basis um but um one of them actually left uh I think it was although it was someone who has had work with me previously and he was a very good va uh but the other writer is still there and she's still sending uh some pitches so I I am q I
[09:19] You know what what it is greg I think it has to be a hybrid of both uh by both I mean you have you know so you have your in-house writers who you pay by the hour or who you pay uh on a monthly basis or something uh you know core team members then I think we also need to have some freelancers or some va's uh whom we can bring in or whom we can give more work in case your internal team member is you know out sick or something
[09:48] Um does that make sense do you think yeah we are really diving in now but can I ask you then what how do you feel about burnout like you know how many hours a week can someone do horror pitches not long time because I personally did a year of of horror pitches before the team grew enough for me to phase out and you know months like six to nine before I could see the light at the end of the tunnel like months six to nine were a grind like a real grind for me
[10:26] Because it it was my full-time income and I was sending well I don't know at least like 15 pitches a day and that's not that much but that's a lot no that's too much that's that's too much I think the most I have said personally is like five or something um yeah you know um so so what you are I think I think that's a very good point that's a very good question um so I think there are two factors that we have to keep in mind number one is that
[10:54] You know for someone like you or me or your your partner or someone who is an I think we probably are more journalists doing the very same thing day in and day out can uh you know uh can can be a boring experience for us after after a while we can burn out um the second so but for someone who is getting paid and you know they are you know so I have some team members who are working at the office the physical office and then I have some who are
[11:22] Working remotely right um in their case it's usually I don't I I do have a couple of team members who have mentioned that they get bored or so what I do will have them do something internal you know one of the internal projects like one of our team members I was telling her yesterday uh in our weekly reviews I I told her that look after this week the number of hero pitches would probably slow down a bit you might not be getting a lot of responses and so on
[11:50] So I think uh that would be a good time you to update uh you know publish some articles on our website and and you know publish some of the pending podcast episodes she welcomes that uh because she has a software background and so on so she knows WordPress and so on and and you know just one last point is that then um I was actually not sure if I should be mentioning this in our uh uh discussion or not but I am actually we are restarting guest posting as well uh
[12:21] Because I can see that sometimes the team members um you know they they can get very discouraged when they have sent a page and it does not get published or it gets published but it's a you know unlinked mention um so what I have been telling them is that you know we're doing guest posting you are using the same pitching uh but you are using it in a bit of a different manner um and um the good thing is for them that um you know they have more opportunities
[12:51] To earn backlinks right and for the clients as well what I'm hoping is that one of the one of the problem that we have with our clients is that they say okay harrow is all fine and dandy but we need inner page links or you know we've gone for select anger tags so that's why we are now restarting guest posts which we stopped doing maybe about two years ago or something yeah it's smart I mean I I don't know your your company size but we are definitely at that point where
[13:20] You know of course we're focusing we're increasing our our legion budget we're going to hire a consultant to focus on churn to make sure our customer service gets better and better but one of the biggest ROI areas for us will be what else can we do besides HARO because we do have clients like you we love the horror wins thanks but if you could just get us any other page any custom anchor text like you could 2x 3x 4x the budget and it it's just increasingly becoming like
[13:52] Wow I need as the business owner to spend some time and think about what else we can do for our clients yeah yeah so I mean I think for us uh guest post then uh I'm also considering um infographic design as well so these are things which we have done previously you um so infographic design then also offering to do outreach for those infographics because I mean you probably know that when you are contacting uh which you want to earn a backlink form um you don't have to go with just one
[14:26] Strategy maybe maybe they will like guest post maybe they will not like a guest post but they be interested in republishing and infographic and so on you know um because there is there is also a lot of sales mindset involved you know like like even when you are negotiating those links with them you know they would be like okay we want a backlink as well um and then maybe your client is not interested in that site a backlink so maybe you have to get it from I don't know one of your
[14:53] Pet projects or something um that makes sense yeah we we've we've talked about the sales mindset too because you know our writers are paid you know just sticking in our horror lane here our writers are paid for performance that's that's over half their pay so when they get an unlinked mention you know we train them on how to follow up on those but even with the incentive they're not getting that many converted and part of that isn't on them it's just that's the publication but definitely a factor is
[15:32] They're not sales people they're not or tweaking or you know there's different things that could be done that where this conversation just came up for us this week or last week so it's very timely our conversation you know it's just we need to revisit that aspect of what we're doing and as you said insert some some sales of what can we do for you to make this yeah exactly and and um so you you you did ask about our size so our size I think including
[16:03] Me we are like um six or seventy members I think it's seven now right uh but you guys are full time uh no no we are not full-time so um yeah so we have three full-time team members and then what I have found is that a lot of the you know the local uh you know pakistani uh females they're usually housewives they have kids to take care of so they're really happy working with us in a in a part-time capacity and you know like they are extremely
[16:34] Happy to be able to work remotely um you know we we give uh you know paid holidays and so on uh I of course if I was working with I don't know with with someone from um the us or someone I would not be able to afford them even I guess uh but with these uh team I can give them some incentives and some you know additional opportunities to learn stuff and so on as well uh if that's awesome yeah of course it does that's awesome
[17:03] But but the thing the problem that I face you know greg is that then I you know if I was a sole proprietor all I would have to take care of would be just me but then when I have team members uh who are not freelancers who are not virtual um I because of the contacts that I have in place with them and so on I cannot just tell them that okay I don't have any work during the christmas vacation so you know see you after 15 january or something I
[17:30] Still have to take care of them which means that I have to invest a lot of um you know energy and time and so on with them uh but I'm hoping that it will pay off later on at least you know yeah it's it's tough there uh we we're pretty much all freelance yeah that's all we've ever uh you know the the owners we're just getting our accounting in order in 2020 and like the owners are employees now but uh we're we have very few like guaranteed we have we have what we
[18:02] Can talk about our team structure but you know in in quote-unquote management roles to apply to all companies uh we have like monthly rates we give some people but you know they're still freelancers and we're like you we try to be mindful of holidays but unlike you we're not giving paid holidays necessarily so that's yeah yeah I I think that's wonderful what you're doing but I'm sure it puts pressure on you yeah it does it does put put puts pressure on me and then recently like in the last I guess one
[18:36] Year I also had I also had this realization that I am as sort of core team members you know as as not freelancers but core team members they some of them might be treating me as okay this is a freelance client um this week I will work four hours and the next week I will not work and then the next week you know I will demand to work 20 hours so so it's a total imbalance at times um not with all the team members I have
[19:06] Some really good team members but at least a couple so I've tried to one of my motivation for the next year is I without being unfair or something but I just want to be a bit more assertive and a bit more mindful of the relationship dynamics if you know what I mean of course yeah yeah there's yeah I mean we could talk about that as a whole topic too if you want so I'll keep my mouth shut no uh okay one thing one thing that um
[19:38] So you talked about the sales mindset thing right so one thing that I have is that uh I I did a hiring uh spree in maybe a few months ago I think in the last quarter so one thing that I do is that um if the writer is following up with me you know the candidate that I'm considering for for a position at the company if they're following up with me and they're being very professional about it so that also helps me to see if they can be good at it when they are
[20:05] Trying to get a backlink you know so some people are really good at it and some people are like extremely terrible at it um so the couple of team members I recently hired um they were they were quite good at it you know like um uh reminding me and and trying to get my intention and so on so I think you can also try that with new hires I yeah we yeah we could talk about the vetting process but I I can see what you're saying because
[20:30] We're actually hopefully in 2021 moving into having some part-time sales reps for the and there were a couple people that reached out and I was doing my best to dig through my LinkedIn to find their original message so I could follow up with them and as I was doing it and I still did it but as I was doing it I was really chiding myself like if they were a real sales person I would not be spending all this effort to find like they would be at the top of my
[21:00] Inbox so why am I doing this like I'm doing that that's such a good I'm doing a lot of the effort here that's a really difficult point yeah it's funny yeah no that's that's that's a good point and um I mean uh so I I know there is so much to talk about um I mean uh I think I think uh we have we have about another 15 minutes for this uh episode as much time as you like and as little as you like you know
[21:29] Whatever your audience would benefit from um I mean I think I think we can go on and uh talk for another maybe 15 to 30 minutes um so I'm just trying to schedule uh what what we want to discuss in this uh episode and hopefully we can have again have you again in a future episode you know um so so what's what's your team size um like how do you hire uh freelancers is it from something like upwork or or you know the philippines or something or
[21:58] If you want to share you know yes no so today we are about 15 about 30 writers and I'm I'm starting to tap out where I know to get good writers from uh so we're we're you know we have maybe we have one right two writers in the philippines one in kenya but that's really it from like no no native english background and it's really tough because I you know I speak a little bit of chinese and spanish and french but I couldn't write near as good as most
[22:41] Applicants in these languages and I really sympathize you know I've taught esl I've been an editor but we're selling our clients on ghostwriting as their c-suite executive you know obviously they're they're with us for the SEO obviously but yeah some of them there's a little PR value and they want the quote culturally to be a fit and we've just had a couple early on where we're like oh geez like this person does not know our clients culture and and the thing they said is just like a big no-no you
[23:14] Know so um and and with HARO it's one way so to try to shorten that up we're pretty much north america based and I know how that's going to come off it's we haven't been able to figure out how to make it fit with our clientele the people we're targeting otherwise and so to that end in my in my application it's just a Google form but I have this was per a mentor's advice one field is a custom question and it doesn't really matter what it is
[23:48] But it's just a chance to see two sentences of their raw unedited writing and you know if they don't punctuate if they don't capitalize like these basic things it's just such an easy automatic rejection because as you know horror is one way there's no time for editing pitches uh at least the way we structured our company so yeah and then you know we have 30 35 riders right now we promote from our writer crew to what we call coaches and so we try to keep it about one coach
[24:21] For every 10 writers and now that we're at that scale of three gonna get a fourth coach soon we have someone that took from me the responsibility of like directing that whole crew because it just it just got too big and I was getting pulled like so thin on the other things that a business owner should do so um and then we have some other support roles I don't know if you're curious to know about but and that's that's how we do it right right right uh yeah that that makes
[24:51] Sense and and I think um uh I would love to know about the support crew as well uh but in terms of the the you know the the writers the the key thing that we look for while hiring is to make sure that they have you know um they're extremely fluent in english you know um yeah there are no typos and grammar mistakes or you know um some of the things that I have found with you know uh with our south asian culture is that they're a lot of the
[25:19] Applicants they are prone to use words like you know sir and madam and so on you know and then I have to tell them you're not under the british news rule for for seven years now so you don't have to use the word sir madam uh you know unless you're meeting the queen or the president or something you know um I mean I in my first job I call really sir you know but that's that's uh it's something you have to go comfortable with you know you're a
[25:46] You're a colleague you don't you don't call everyone sir madam at least yeah in the western world you know it yeah we just don't do it anymore um but I want to respect in other cultures you know in chinese culture it's by age the title you give people so if they're older than you you better be still using yeah respectfully it's it's the same in terms of uh so there is the age factor um and then there is also if someone is more experienced or has a
[26:13] Higher designation at a company or so on then you know as a as a sign of respect uh for their experience and you know them being having more uh knowledge and so on um want to do that but then again um I think some one of the one of the potential problem with that is that the the younger person will maybe not take responsibility or not feel um justify to have um you know uh justify to to take the initiative you know um so like sometimes I have to sometimes
[26:47] Like what I try to do more often now is that that I try to push the team to when they come up with a question to me I'm like okay you have asked this to me like okay this there is a site and they are saying that you know we want to give you a backlink but can you give us a backlink as well um so you have this question for me and I understand that but what would you do if you were in my place so I tried to
[27:08] You know sort of push them to like okay it's fine if you come to me with a question or another team lead but you know do mention did it okay in my opinion greg I think we should we have option a and then option b you know what do you think um I I don't know if you you guys do the same with pushing the team to you know uh get better at negotiations and so on or follow-ups and so on you know we we may do a little too much
[27:38] Uh hand-holding and and that kind of for our team we I'm right there with you though that's another reason I like the freelance model it's not it's not to be overly harsh but it is to like the responsibility for your success you know you're included in that responsibility we provide upfront training and we have a coach that you can ask questions to you know we'll do what we can you also need to be part of this equation because we can't do it all for you that there's just
[28:12] Not enough collective effort to support all these people we need their help yeah I know that that's a really good model um so you you guys have your own uh training material and sops in place for for the new writers to get trained and so on right yeah of course we do like a hybrid um Google doc but with loom videos for certain topics uh and try to keep it under five minutes each video you know I think it it's gotten a little too big but it's
[28:42] That like 45 minutes right now I think we need to split it into two to be um that's for the initial onboard like the whole set of information and then um and then and then what I try to do is every month ask one of our best writers to share a tip in the team slack and that way there's a little knowledge exchange among the team there you know when when a writer first joins a company that's 20 30 people it can feel like is this supposed to be
[29:16] Like are people upset I joined and taking work but I tried to at least when I did their onboarding calls and now it's my my colleague uh I tried to remind people you know there's a million registered horo users so you're you know us us 20 writers like we're not you don't need to worry too much about us competing with you there's there's plenty of other people out there to compete with so yeah let's have a little collaborative environment yeah exactly that that's a good point
[29:50] It's it's something that that um you know we we also want to promote that kind of collaborative uh nature a bit more um so I mean we we are much smaller in size than you but but what I have been trying to do is that um it may sound crazy because we are like six seven people but um so we have like three teams with every team having or even two team members or something and then a couple of team members they're also team member of the harrow
[30:17] Uh one of the hero teams and one of the guest post team you know uh and there then they are given targets and my my my goal is to get them to uh work in more collaboration without my involvement you know so maybe I think those team leaders are similar to the the coach roles that you have uh but then I also want other team members to you know be more open to sharing um and tips and so on yeah yeah it's a beautiful thing and
[30:45] Like you said you've got some team members who maybe they don't need full-time employment they're still want to be working and they're very productive when they are working so why not empower them and it's it's a little skill this this horror thing so it's a niche skill that people can walk away with if they want to go somewhere else a day yeah yeah and and I mean uh what about the number of I mean uh I know we have discussed this a bit uh previously um there seems to be a lot of other I
[31:15] Mean I think we marketers have a tendency to uh mess up things whenever there's a new platform coming coming in or a platform which is getting popular you know you see a lot of copycats and so on so I mean do you think that the the number of queries at harrow right now do you think that it's not in comparison to the number of marketers which are now using the platform yeah I think it's going to be a problem at some point I know that a year ago my partner morgan and I we
[31:47] Used to talk about what happens if we get out competed you know but but I track our conversion ratio and it is it is getting worse over time but at the same time some of that is internal quality control so that's a factor that's kind of hard to pinpoint um you know we're going for higher quality so it won't get worse right uh I would think um and we're talking about a factor of like two per win overall has been added to to each win so and over the course of a
[32:25] So I I know the competition is getting worse but if our conversion ratio is only gotten worse by two pitches per win we're fortunate enough at least that we we can afford to eat that for now we can we can deal with that whether our agrees with that or not I don't uh we we should be in touch with them and make sure that the compensation still feels fair to them uh that's where we're at we're we're trying to launch our sas as you know for the diy crowd
[32:59] And just speaking very frankly business owner to business owner that is for us diversifying so you know if by chance we do get to this extreme it's so competitive the done-for-you service is getting tighter and tighter to make work as on the margins then maybe this diy platform wouldn't enable morgan and I and a lot of our team to pivot and still survive together uh I don't think we're gonna hit that extreme any time soon the more thing I worry about which I think is very unlikely is that HARO
[33:36] Just implodes you know we're we pin all of our our working lives on horror right now most of it like 95 of it so um I don't I'm not too worried about the competition but I do like it's this small irrational fear of like what if suzy and just just canceled harold then we would be uh yeah we would be in a bad time but but I mean I think I think uh I I I think about the same thing as well which is I guess one reason
[34:11] Uh another reason for uh looking back into guest posting and so on but then I think uh you know if if for someone like you guys who who have um a huge team and and you have writers and a high conversion rate and so on I think the same skill can probably be nurtured and modified a bit for contacting the journalists directly for for a particular uh client you know um as in digital PR and so on yeah yeah and I mean I know that was on your list I have to
[34:44] Be honest it's a field that I haven't we haven't broken into so we tried and agility PR as platforms to to facilitate that yeah I think here's a weakness in the way we structured jolly uh we ghostwrite as our clients that's a so we don't do PR for them we actually become our clients which is why again we have such a high bar for our writers because they become that c-suite client but on the back end it's a real weakness of ours because you've got these
[35:23] Great ideas that you just suggested which could be like a saving grace for us if hara we don't have relationships between jolly or greg or morgan and these journalists we have budding relationships between each client but when a new client comes on board we start at square one so it's it's a real like double-edged sword there we do well at ghost writing but we don't have relationships and mass so I mean I think you're right I really do yeah so so the relationships a bit is
[36:00] Something that we uh struggle with as well however um we when we are sending pitches uh we we inform the client that look we would love to send a pitch uh posing as you if you want us to do but uh other than that we will just um introduce ourselves as as you know uh at your organization so are you okay with that so the benefit of that is that usually for the clients who who may be uh concerned as in how the brand comes across or you know
[36:34] I you know I the ceo would never say something like z or x or y so in that case the writers also tend to build a us somewhat of a brand so right now in our guest posting when we are introducing ourselves we can mention that hey my name is xyz and I have been cited in publications like you know mn and business insider and forbes and that helps a lot I think you know it's very smart it's very smart yeah so I think I think you should
[37:05] Definitely try to uh bring that into the equation as well you know sometimes a lot of the hero curies they might be asking for someone who has an hr background so you know then one of our team members who may have a degree I don't know hr or something they can come in and then there might be another query about cyber security and we actually have someone who has actually worked in like um um I think it's like somewhat of a spy agency and she's a software engineer that's
[37:33] Yeah so that she she can go ahead and you know uh talk about that yeah that's so cool yeah no we yeah I'm right there with you we have a lot of wonderful people on the team that we don't we don't leverage all their expertise for sure but what were you going to ask yeah sorry so um before I ask about uh the software tool that you guys are building uh sorcery um I I I do have one more question about um you know um the journalist approach versus the
[38:07] Specialist approach like we we can see a lot of su agencies who might be doing uh SEO just for lawyers um there might be agencies which are you know working with I don't know just plumbers or something so is that something you have uh thought about uh in terms of which industry sector to focus on and then also if on top of the back linking thing you want to add in more services which is not backlinks but something related like you know content marketing or something like that
[38:41] So I didn't intend for us to become like this but about the middle of 2020 I realized that of our clients were affiliate marketers so that that was really interesting to and then over the coming months as I was examining these business terms like ltv I realized that while the affiliate marketers understood what we provided and were easy sales they often left us after a handful of links even though we have minimums in our contracts yeah that they must have come into our service with a predetermined number in
[39:24] Mind of how long they were going to stick around and and it's fair like it's we talked about the limitations of harl it's and it's home page that's what you're going to get and so you know we they knew that we were upfront about that but they surely knew and and I'm not saying anyone screwed us they stuck around for the minimum and then it just became a trend so I still love many of our affiliate clients and we definitely have some that are like a
[39:54] Hundred links and on and 30 links and on they're not all cutting out that early but I think moving forward I do want to uh focus on some more sas which historically you know people know them having let's be honest the budget is not usually the problem with sas companies so as long as we're serving them well I would think we'll stick around with them a bit longer and so that that's on the industry side um you know and we have a smattering of e-commerce clients uh
[40:29] Direct service providers but it was pretty predominantly affiliate up until recently when we made intentional efforts to to diversify our legion and then service within link building rather than build capacity internally I think what I'd like to do and this is tough in link building is to find people who are as good at what they do as as we are at what we do and that's tough within link building people across the board seem to want to stuff you with crummy crummy links and and run away so you
[41:11] Really got to find someone with a good uh and I've identified a few and you know we're in the baby talks with some you call it white label call it something like that because like I told you it just seems at this stage we have 70 plus clients like we if we could just add some more services we would be doing ourselves more of a favor as a business than adding three more done-for-you horror clients you know we could serve a lot more clients so that's link building but
[41:46] I'm we were a content agency for two and a half years and I was a freelance it's I'm really hesitant to get into long-form content again I it's a it's a challenging service clients are extremely picky they place all of their hopes and dreams on the content provider you know they they disregard like optimization their offering even you know and they're just like whoa the blog post didn't generate a positive ROI like that's it after three so it's tough for me and like I told you
[42:21] Just being honest I personally lack the strategy so I'd have to find someone who's very adept who could lead strategy so that one's like crossed out for me right now and then we get into do I want to add services that I literally know nothing about like social or ppc and that makes me uncomfortable because I'm rolling the dice on those partnerships and if I burn through our clients with bad service that gets dangerous so I'm I'm I'm to to wrap up the answer I want to I have to be really careful
[43:00] Though because we finally after two years have a an actual real reputation in our niche just in our niche I'm not saying across industries and as a quality service provider it's it's on our website there's a no filter list of our latest wins so I can't risk it by getting too crazy uh and that's that's tough because if implodes one day I'll be thinking back to this conversation and like well I should have taken a risk I think I guess these are these are really good points and I'm
[43:38] Um you know it seems like you you you put put in a lot of um you know thoughts um you know a lot of thought and effort into the brainstorming this whole thing and and being very strategic about it which is which is quite awesome um so I think I think in terms of services uh I guess the the natural next uh option would surely be to add in more link building services which which the existing writers can you know branch out uh to right in terms of the industry um again I'm
[44:15] Not sure so I mean I totally understand the the sas bit I think in our case most of the clients have been sas and e-commerce companies and then some um you know some of those direct services companies affiliates we had in the start maybe in 2013 to 2015 15 we started way back in 2013 but just like you said uh those clients have very small budgets and a very small sort of a runway so they are there and and you spend a lot of effort and so on
[44:44] But then you know they are they're going after maybe a few months um but the the point I'm trying to make is in terms of industry selection is one thing that I'm very interested in is something that we have been discussing um is if we want to focus on a particular industry sector as in I don't know um cyber security so just providing services to cyber security companies or law companies or something because I know it has its own challenge and so on um and and maybe you can add your
[45:20] Thoughts on daughters that as well but the benefit is that then I am hiring and working with writers who have experience and insights and and within that particular industry and and the additional additional benefit is that whether I'm using hero or I am contacting directly the I'm contacting the target journalist I am building relations in a particular which then I can you know um it can hopefully help get more results if I am just focusing on link building because link building is can also get very hard to scale especially if you are
[45:57] Just using hero I think yeah I agree yeah I'm I'm I'm right there with you I mean at least in my freelance writing career I found that uh I put off niching down for as long as I could and then it became apparent like you get this focused portfolio and sales become so much easier rather than appearing the generalist you know I mentioned for part of our marketing now on our website we have 10 latest wins but those are the things that's all of our oh yeah it looks
[46:38] It's good but it's still some people come to us and want relevancy right so they see the wins from across all of our clients which is still very broad and unfocused and so they see a win that was great for let's say a pets focused client or a win that was great for a sas client or what and it's like do I really want all the and so it's uh yeah it's it's a definite pain point you could say of ours and we have been focused on growing for the
[47:09] Past six to nine months and then at a certain point you do have to think about you know in which direction do you really want to grow I I I think so I'm I'm in agreement with you I think it's the conversation at least at our we need to have very shortly yeah yeah and um um it's something that we have to discuss in more detail as well because obviously I get a bit nervous as well about it it's not an easy decision to make and so
[47:37] On uh limit in yourself right yeah yeah I mean limiting yourself so if you do have a couple of industry sectors that we most of the team members are kind of sort of good at it better at it than other sectors so it can be very interesting actually yeah uh for sure um but but I will I will update you on that later on and I would love to to to hear about what you guys decide on it as well uh later on yeah definitely that would be great I've
[48:04] Really enjoyed our messages it's really interesting yeah same same here uh do you do you want to speak more about the software tool that you are uh bringing in before wrap up this meeting this uh oh I appreciate that I mean basically the idea is and having operated a team of horror writers yourself you would know some of the pain points you open up HARO it's this giganto list of everything uh and so we internally we were using airtable and so we we have a team of ladies who
[48:38] As soon as the newsletter rolls out three times a day they're on it they're assigning DR they're assigning like we know this publication's nofollow this one's mentions from our own from our own experience you know we're at 30 000 pitches now and a couple thousand so that's what we built in internally and then my partner morgan he's the ideas man uh I just suggested uh going back to our conversation you know maybe maybe being the dfy service provider isn't all we could do together maybe we we get
[49:16] Plenty of of people who would like our service but they can only afford one link a month you know and that's totally understandable but as a service provider not workable so we could offer this platform to them which it won't do the writing for you you still need a good writer on your uh it's not done for you but it's the that that we offer you know it'll it it offers the daily three times daily updated in terms of the DR the traffic do we know if it gives do
[49:49] Follow no follow unlinked dimensions and we're even throwing in some of you know I mentioned our writer training you know some tutorials on on HARO and it the idea is it'll be free until we've proven you've earned a link through it so you'll send your pitches through it we will never receive your email for privacy concerns but you send your pitches through it and then we have on at jolly and we will sorcery link hunters we call them and they will input wins and if you're in it that's when
[50:28] We'll ask you would you like to keep being a user you could pay us to use uh and so we're hoping to keep it to 97 a month but it'll be free uh 97 just to keep it under 100 right right and but it'll be free until proven and we like that model you know I think you do the same it's just it's performance based right yeah absolutely but so so that that sounds very very interesting I I will also link to the I think if you
[50:58] Want um I can also link to the demo uh video or or any other resources or a landing page for the software and obviously jolly SEO within the description but just a couple of quick questions um so um the first the first one is that one of the problem that we have with our clients is that they they are very much against duplicate backlinks so we unless it's a very huge client and a client who who you know just wants links we don't charge for a duplicate backings
[51:30] As in if my company is abc.com I don't want two links from forbes.com uh unless only one of them is a do follow you know so do you have any do you do you have plans to um work around that as well um sorcery hadn't thought about that we kind of put that on the user to be mindful of their own backlink profile that's really interesting uh kind of like a build in a suppression list like a user could have a question list so they that could be really interesting so so
[52:07] So you see uh for example uh in our team we want to make sure that we don't have two team members sending a pitch for the same client to the same publication um so we basically every day on slack um you know we have a harrow channel and then one team member would be like okay uh I am picking this query uh for that publication I'm picking this from from that client I don't know if that's on my end or your end uh sorry I can I can hear you fine is there any
[52:43] Problem it cut off for a sec but we're back I think ah yes yes I think we are back now yeah yeah it's now saying that it's unstable in mind as well yeah um okay okay so so you see what I'm saying is that um I ideally what I want is that if my team member he picks a query for client a he's immediately alerted if another writing is on the same query or um that publication already has given a do follow back link to the client
[53:20] See that's interesting because because of our kind of blinders of how we operate at jolly we didn't think about that at all to be honest so at jolly uh a new client comes in and a writer chooses that account you know we we have some say but uh they we don't mix and match so that there aren't two writers pitching for the same client and that writer is is aware of their wins now not all of our clients care about duplicates as you said uh but but for the ones that
[53:55] Do care about duplicates that again going back to responsibility it is on the writer to to be mindful uh so or else jolly eats it um and for sorcery we did not contemplate so you will be able to add multiple writers to your account and uh accounts so that that's something we we should consider a way to flag a domain as I'd prefer not to see these pitches after I've pitched that yeah that's tough though because what if you know there's a conversion ratio there you know that that just because
[54:35] Your writer pitch doesn't mean they're gonna get it so oh yeah yeah that's tough too yeah that's a really interesting conundrum almost so so there is a conversion rate but what I'm saying is that you know uh forbes might be sending a curie every single day right and we can answer every query of them but we want to answer it just once not answering the same query twice uh as in from Google oh the same query from the same plant exactly exactly oh yeah well again
[55:04] Yes that would not find theirs yeah but I mean I I totally understand your business model as well and I find it very interesting that you have just one writing working on one account um yeah in our case we we get a bit more um just just like if you know that writer is not doing too well on that account or something so it's not something we have thought about but we should definitely consider consider that as well uh well it's because of you know we have an onboarding survey uh
[55:33] And we really we really ask our writer to assimilate this person you know that they're ghostwriting as into themselves so it would be a lot to ask of multiple but but sorcery will actually do that so when you choose a query you can save it to a short list or even if you skip that part and you just jump into a it will get pulled out of the opportunities list and put into drafted and then when you pitch it it'll go into pitch so it won't be for each for each
[56:10] Domain that you are have a project we're calling it set up in your account you won't see that query show up again for that domain because yeah it's a good you they could have multiple writers operating in there but if the query is for that domain it won't show up to that and and then there is an um I mean um another interesting problem is uh that that um you know sometimes sometimes there might be a curie that um sorry some sometimes a publication may have given us a backlink and it may
[56:50] Have been an unlinked mention or or a no follow-back link you know and we have blacklisted that website you know I may want to come up with a more respectable term but like we just don't want to send pitches to a publication which we know will give us just no follow but then again there are some publications which might no follow one backlink but then after two months uh you will send a query and they will give you a do follow back link right um so so our work around at
[57:24] Present and I think this is a definite that will change as we get users especially outside of our team to say what matters to them but we'll have a little you can red flag a publication and there will be a drop down list of because you know in HARO sometimes it's straight up blackmail they will say if you pay me money uh you know so we want we want a drop down list of like four or five options but the option five will be like send a custom message to
[57:57] Our customer support so that we can start to develop a log about these domains and I think what we're going to have to do in the short term is just go with what's the trend that's what we'll label it yeah and let our user base know that's that's I guess it can be a it can be a predictability score right like how likely you are to and I think it will possibly evolve into that you know give it a label but say this label is appropriate x percent of
[58:32] The time yeah yeah yeah yeah it could go both ways eighty percent of the time it to do you follow twenty percent of no fault or eighty percent of time they'll follow points sometimes yeah it really could be I mean um I'm I'm so excited about sorcery you know like honestly um all the efforts you guys are putting into and some of the information you have shared previously in this meeting I mean once you guys have some data some people using it you guys will have tons
[58:56] Of data that then can be utilized you uh provide more value to the users and give more insights and so on so it's really interesting you you will really like this article we're going to publish in a couple weeks uh we uh 2100 of our wins and I I need to give credit to arvind kesh uh he I did very very very high level of like this many so these whims are up to two years old and it's a link decay so I just wanted to see how these links
[59:32] Look two years later six months later right right right it's very very high level he went in and dove in publications industry by the publication's business model and like what kind of decay it was and he was able to state like look if you if you don't care about unlinked mentions this type of publication you can still keep pitching it but if you do then like these are the types of publications you should focus on and he and he also found stuff like you know we only bill for dr50 and above
[1:00:09] He found that on the dr-50 side and the dr-90 side is where the most decay was and the least decay was happening in the middle just things like that that'll be in the article that's that's really good I would love to love to check it out that's that's really interesting honestly you made me excited though you're right the data that could be collected if the platform it's so much if for me earphone because I'm not a technical so I'm just like please let it work like
[1:00:38] I just hope it'll work yeah but if it all works out you're it should be a little data machine uh if we get enough users that are interested in the project and like these data articles and stuff like that absolutely and and one last question you you mentioned something which I think which uh will will get our uh own team very excited because even till yesterday I was being asked by team members like okay I have been granted a link and then I don't discover it you know
[1:01:07] One month later or something even though we have a paid hfs account and we are using Google and so on so do you have any thoughts on the link hunter feature of your your software yeah well we're gonna do both so at this point uh jolly SEO is building about 300 links a month from so we will be funneling those in and in those wins sorcery will search through all of sorcery any referring domain I mean anybody linked from that referring domain will be found in sorcery and analyzed to see if
[1:01:44] It went through sorcery so it'll find those wins automatically but you know jolly only focuses on DR 50 to to up so that's not going to be enough so we will pay humans on the sorcery side too probably I will poach some team member from jolly uh I have one candidate in um and basically my idea is any active I'm going to say anybody sending like at least 20 pitches within a few weeks time frame I will pay to start looking for backlinks for them because again it's going to be
[1:02:20] Completely free until we find that it's useful to you so I will probably wait a few weeks because as you HARO takes a while to get a win live right yeah they and they got to be someone who's actually using it I won't bother looking for someone's links if they've only sent four pitches but if they've sent more than 20 pitches I think is my number uh and they're doing that every month at I'll probably I'll probably pay someone to look for their wins for them and then
[1:02:49] The other side is we will definitely introduce a gamify aspect so you report a win that's less money that I have to pay this link hunter team so we could pay it to the user whether it's a discount on the monthly bill or maybe you report five wins and you get a free month you know we haven't figured out the exact but it should it should be gamified so it becomes a community thing uh and then just uh you know the tech will do its but there's always going to be a certain
[1:03:26] Element we need humans to actually put enough energy into it whether it's because sorcery is paying a team member or because sorcery is rewarding a user I think that's going to be the way to go forward yeah I think I think the manual aspect is um I mean for those who have done uh link building via hero or otherwise and are bringing in tons of links they do know that you know even with Ahrefs uh sometimes I can see the backlink live with my uh you know naked eyes but
[1:03:56] It's not there in Ahrefs or SEMrush or something for say four weeks you know um so it's very important we love Ahrefs right yeah same here we love the tools yeah but they they they know too things 100 percent it it's a struggle for us for the live links because uh we we want to collect on the revenue for sure yeah and and one thing that we have started to do recently which you may want to look into uh one very troubling trend that we have seen
[1:04:31] A couple of sites do is that they will not link to the client's website but they will link to their LinkedIn or Twitter which is crazy which means that then I have to add we have to add their Twitter URL or LinkedIn URLs and look for those links as well on an ongoing basis oh jolly doesn't get to charge for those yeah but we can try to change those we we we we do follow-ups to change the website yeah uh and and we do for even the mentions
[1:05:00] The unlinked pensions you know um so it can get crazy yeah we do search uh Google for names for for sure yeah so yeah yeah yeah I know you can't stick to just backlink um yeah that's and then you can crack as well uh I don't know if you have um you know that's also a good resource right to to see if there's an unlinked mention or maybe they have got the name wrong you know uh my name can often be uh spelled wrong by by a lot of the western
[1:05:35] I can only imagine uh I it's got to be frustrating for business builders in south asia you know we are just notorious as especially like we just don't appreciate that there's a lot of diversity outside english and american yeah so no but I mean it's it's it's nothing against them uh sometimes even even someone from my own country they would spell my name there is one lady who is constantly mailing me I think about the job opportunity and every single time she's spelling my name wrong even though she
[1:06:08] Is from the local that was too good I had to mess up my own camera it's okay of course I'm just I'm just really curious like why does she keep calling me ifran rather than Irfan I hear that you're from man it's it's pretty mind-blowing uh yeah well that's a topic perhaps for another day but a whole other topic for sure about applications and things like that oh yeah sure sure uh well um you know it's it's been really good I think this is probably uh going to be a most favorite episode
[1:06:45] Of the season this is like I think the 30th episode of the of the show um but I I think I I love interaction our interaction about links and building an SEO agency and so on it was really interesting hey likewise I I really enjoyed it as well I appreciate your time uh I knocked I had such a good time I knocked my camera out of the running show I think so I'm just going to hold this the the pleasure is all mine thank you so much and you know
[1:07:10] Um we will we will make sure that we include your links social media links anything like that uh within the within the show's description uh uh we'll be posting it on YouTube uh sooner and then later on we'll be also posting it on itunes um stitcher etc and obviously you will be posting it on your end as well um greg thank you so much uh wish you a good uh evening thank you man you you have a good rest of your day out there I really
[1:07:39] Appreciate it it was nice to connect same here thank you take care