SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders
How Lifehacker Went from 1m to 10m Monthly Uniques Fast with Whitson Gordon EP 187
05 Mar 2016
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
This is The Top, where I interview entrepreneurs who are number one or number two in their industry in terms of revenue or customer base. You'll learn how much revenue they're making, what their marketing funnel looks like, and how many customers they have. I'm now at $20,000 per top. Five and six million. He is hell-bent on global domination. We just broke our 100,000-unit soul mark.
And I'm your host, Nathan Latka. Okay, Top Tribe, this week's winner of the 100 bucks is Dustin Goodwin. He's in the HR industry, specifically in the software as a service space, looking to increase his revenue. So congratulations, Dustin.
For your guys' chance to win 100 bucks every Monday on the show to build your idea, simply subscribe to the podcast on iTunes now and then text the word Nathan to 33444. Again, text the word Nathan to 33444. Coming up tomorrow morning, Top Tribe, you learn from Eran Eyal. They hit 100 grand per month in revenue in 2015, and now he's raising a $2.5 million round of funding.
Okay, Top Drive, good morning. Our guest this morning is Whitson Gordon. He's the editor-in-chief of How To Geek. He was formerly the editor-in-chief of Lifehacker and has contributed to other publications including Macworld and Wired. He spends a lot of time breaking technology just so he can learn how to fix it. Whitson, are you ready to take us to the top? Absolutely. Let's do this.
So first things first, tell us how you got involved at Lifehacker and how do you become editor-in-chief?
Oh, my gosh. How long do you have?
Tell me what you got.
You know, it's really weird. I was in college, and I thought that maybe this blogging thing was something that I wanted to do. So I kind of monitored Lifehacker. I went back into their history and kind of looked at how often they were hiring interns and doing stuff like that. um, set up a little personal blog for myself.
So I had writing samples to send them, even though, even though no one was reading this blog that I was writing, I knew that it would be beneficial when I went to apply for an internship or a job. Um, I applied for an internship by some miracle of whatever, got the internship. And, uh, it's been kind of, uh, a whirlwind ever since.
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Chapter 2: How did Whitson Gordon become the editor-in-chief of Lifehacker?
So how the heck, what's the secret? I mean, you first off, I want to try and understand how much of this was was kind of while you were involved. So when did you leave Lifehacker? What year?
I left Lifehacker about three weeks ago.
Oh, wow. OK, so 2016. OK, so you've you've pretty much seen the growth from a million to to you said 10 million uniques just from the U.S. alone, right?
Yeah, I might have those. Yeah, something like a million to, yeah, now they're at, you know, 3 million uniques. Just from the U.S.? Per week. Yeah, that's just from the U.S.
Wow. Okay. And that's per week. So, Whitson, you're like a super genius. Tell us how this worked. Why did it grow so fast? People are listening going, Nathan, ask him the tough freaking questions. I want 4 million weekly uniques.
I know. And I, you know, I can only guess at this point as to what kind of drove that growth. And I, you know, this sounds cheesy, but I've always contributed to kind of 50% just having good quality content that people actually respect. and, and 50% knowing how to market that content.
And I know marketing, especially among, you know, editors and writers, people don't like to think about marketing their stuff. They just want to write. Um, but you know, there are a lot of blogs that kind of fall either too far in the line of quality, but, but boring or, you know, kind of lower quality, but they're really good at writing headlines and tweets.
Give me an example of quality, but boring. Oh, you know, I wouldn't, I mean, I would say probably in the early days, Lifehacker probably tended a little bit more toward quality but boring. Okay, are we talking like NPR? I mean, is that what we're talking about? Yeah, yeah, sure. You know, it doesn't have these really flashy kind of things that suck. You know, it's like NPR versus the local news.
NPR is on the quality but boring side. Or NPR versus BuzzFeed. Yeah, BuzzFeed or a lot of like, you know... blogs like that, that kind of focus on these headlines that really draw you in and then under, under deliver when you actually get there.
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Chapter 3: What strategies contributed to Lifehacker's growth from 1 million to 10 million monthly uniques?
Just remember forward slash the top 197. Okay, Whitson, it's time for my favorite part of the show. You know what's next?
Uh, five questions. Oh, you're so freaking close.
It's time for the famous five. Are you ready?
Uh, yeah.
Number one. I'm not sure. It's okay. You're going to do fine. What's your favorite business book?
I don't have one. No business. I hate to say it. And I know that's just, what's your favorite book in general?
It's not disappointing. What's your favorite book?
Oh, favorite book. I don't know. That's, that's really hard. Do you read? I do read, you know, I would say that I read a lot more, um, kind of articles and stuff like that. Favorite blog. Favorite blog?
Well, besides the one I write for, besides both of the ones that I write for, you know, I've really been liking blogs like Mr. Money Mustache and I Will Teach You To Be Rich, personal finance, stuff like that. I love those. I love books like that too.
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Chapter 4: What role does quality content play in driving traffic?
I love the stuff that everybody loves. But my favorite that I think is undersung is a tool called Brevi, which is available for Windows. There's a Mac app that's similar called Text Expander. And it basically lets you type long strings of text with just a few keystrokes. So if I want to type my address, I can type three keys and it'll...
you know, immediately paste my entire address into the text box. This is great for sending canned email responses. If you have to send the same reply to people every day, um, but just tweak a few little things. It's great for that. It's great for code snippets. It's great for all kinds of stuff. And it is one of the best time saving tools I've ever used.
Top tribe. Can you see how he talks about this? This is why he's going to have a huge success with how to geek. He just, I mean, this is great. This is great. That was the right question for you, Whitson. Okay. Number four, number four, what's your situation? Married, single. Do you have kids?
I am married. I just got married six months ago. Congratulations. Soon enough, I'm sure.
Okay. And how old are you? I'm 28. 28.
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Chapter 5: How important is marketing in the success of online content?
Great. Still 28. I asked you that at the top of the show. Okay. Number four. Here's my question. As you're building your new blog, How To Geek, yes or no, are you getting eight hours of sleep every night?
Yeah, I'd say I'm actually probably getting nine. Gosh, send me an extra one, man. My wife and I are early to bed, early to rise, and we get actually more sleep than I'd like to.
When do you go to bed?
We probably go to bed at like 9.30.
When do you wake up? Six. Dang, I'm jealous. Okay, last question. Whitson, take us back to your 20-year-old self eight years ago. What do you wish he knew?
Ugh. I'll tell you, I'm very happy with my 20-year-old's choices because it got me here and I'm very, very happy with where I am. But this is a productivity tip that I wish I had learned when I was 20. It took me too long to learn. The tool you use does not matter as much as how you use it or the fact that you're using it at all.
I spent far too long playing with different to-do list apps and different Evernote note-taking apps kind of stuff to find the perfect one which fit my workflow perfectly. And at the end of the day, You know, trying to do that is a much bigger waste of time. You're getting less done. You'd be much better off with a tool that's good enough. You know, perfection is the enemy of the good.
Get yourself 90% of the way there and move on to the next thing because you will spend half as much time just trying to get that last 10%.
Whitson rock solid advice. Top tribe. There you have it. Whitson Gordon started off as an intern, worked his way up to editor in chief, took it up to almost 10 million monthly impressions at Lifehacker just from the U.S. or monthly uniques. Now starting his own blog, which will be hugely successful. Whitson, thank you for taking us to the top.
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