EditorNinja

It's been a while since I updated. In October 2023 we did $30,046 in revenue. We edited close to 700,000 words, and are on target to do 1m+ in November or December. We ended the month with 10 editors, though recently had one leave and are down to 9, but we're hiring 2-3 more in the next week or so. Our first full-time employee starts December 4th.

Going full-time on the business in January 2023 seems to be paying off!

As of end of March we're officially at $50k ARR! We brought on a couple of customers in March and realigned pricing to make sense for our agency ICP as they scale up, and that seems to be helping with sales close rates. April will be focused on working on our messaging to get more demos scheduled with our ICPs.

Growing the business, writing blog posts and publishing studies. Trying to get the inbound flywheel turning so that demos are booked every day and new customers join every week. Finding product/market fit and nailing who our ICP is, which is different from who I initially thought.

Reached $10k ARR with two customers signed on for subscriptions. Concentrated for the rest of January to do more demos and learn (including my first no) and continuing to form the product so the workflows work well for all three people involved - admin, editor, and customer.

With the product in the place where we could take subscriptions and interest in the form of demos given, I formed the LLC in Colorado and set out to get the EIN, bank account, and Stripe account.

Took a couple weeks all in all, but by end of December was ready for first subscription customers.

Decided to break ground finally on the product MVP using no-code tools (WordPress plugins) that I used to build the MVP of my other business. Started working on it during the evenings and had a functional product within just a week or so with minimal capital outlay.

Received an SMS about a new submitted project from a content agency that was looking for editing for a sales pitch deck that was about to go to a prospect.

Still invoiced via PayPal, delivered manually via email, but invigorated me to work more on the product itself.

Got a second customer who needed a slide deck edited for an investor presentation. Customer was an old friend from the SEO industry who saw what I was doing and reached out about it.

Turned it around in about 2 days. Money in PayPal and then paid out to editor.

First revenue from a company looking for a proofreader and editor to look at a new sales page they were about to launch.

Used an editor based in the US who turned it around quickly.

Still no product in place, just a WordPress site with a Gravity Form that sent me an SMS via Zapier.

Started working on EditorNinja to help companies who were looking for editors. Posted on Facebook and got 30+ interested editors. Started building the website and the initial version to send work around to editors. Hacked it together with a free WordPress theme and some pages optimized for SEO.