SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders
WriterAccess Makes $9m This Year, Pays Freelancers $6.4m Helping 5,000 Brands With Content
17 Dec 2020
Chapter 1: What is WriterAccess and how does it operate?
That 1,000 active customer base probably has been expanded to about 7,000 active customers in the course of a year. We also have gone from 100 customers when we first started in 2010 to 40,000 customers, more than 40,000 customers that have purchased from us in the history of the company. You are listening to Conversations with Nathan Latka.
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Chapter 2: How has WriterAccess grown since its founding in 2010?
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Chapter 3: What revenue did WriterAccess generate in its early years?
I grant 100% of those requests, no questions asked. Hello everyone, my guest today is Byron White. He is the creator of the content creation platform, writeraccess.com. Byron, you ready to take us to the top? Let's do it. All right, so what is Writer Access? Is this marketplace play here or SaaS? A little of both, actually.
WriterAccess is a marketplace where you can connect with writers, content strategists, editors, translators, and people that are performing the type of valuable work that content marketers need these days. We charge a SaaS fee to access our talent pool and our software that makes it all work. But essentially, RedRexcess makes it easy to find freelancers, place orders, and manage the workflow.
Now, you came on back, I believe it was like September of 2018, I think. You told me that you launched the company in 2010. At that point, you were just passing about, I think, 1,000 customers. Where are you today? How many customers? Well, that 1,000 active customer base probably has been expanded to about 7,000 active customers in the course of a year.
We also have gone from 100 customers when we first started in 2010 to 40,000 customers, more than 40,000 customers that have purchased from us in the history of the company. So, so, so tell me, tell me that one more time and what that means is that basically just means a lot of people touch you, they churn. So you still have 7,000 actively paying today, but 40,000 paid you something.
Chapter 4: How does WriterAccess ensure a steady flow of freelancers?
That's correct. In the life of the company, 40,000 people have purchased content from us. I see. I see. So take me back to founding year 2010. How much revenue did you do that year? You remember? About a half a million. Okay. Interesting. And what did you end up finishing 2019 with? about 8.2 million. And I can tell you this because it's public information. We made the Inc.
5,000 list five years in a row and that's public. Congratulations. I would grill you anyway and try and get it if you hadn't disclosed it. So 8.5 million last year. And what do you think you'll finish this year with? North of nine, south of 10.
Chapter 5: What challenges does WriterAccess face in managing freelancers?
So we'll show another growth year this year for sure. And have you done this all bootstrapped? Absolutely. Oh, we love that. That's impressive. So decade in $10 million company, all bootstrapped. What's the closest you've come to selling equity? Not close at all. I haven't had interest up to this time.
We've talked with multiple but when you make the 5000 list, you get repeated phone calls from private equity venture capital, even on the corporate side. People interested in the business because they see growth. Right. So you they're interested in learning more about the business model.
So we've talked with dozens and dozens, probably hundreds of people over the years and keep our door open for communication. But for us, it's about growing the business and helping our freelancers grow. represent thousands of freelancers. Yeah. Break down the marketplace for me. So, so let's just talk about the last 30 days.
How many businesses like me have paid you something to access your freelancer talent?
Chapter 6: How does WriterAccess maintain transparency with clients and freelancers?
Thousands. Okay. Can you be more like two, three, five, 10? Less than 10, more than two. Okay. Got it. And, and, uh, let's just make it easy. Let's say it was 5,000, right? 5,000 businesses like me have paid you to access your freelancer talent. How many freelancers have they paid at least a dollar through your platform over the past 30 days? Probably about the same number.
I mean, when I say they've done business with us, they've made a transaction with us. So Remember a couple of things, Nathan, we charge a monthly subscription fee for the service. So it's kind of like a platform as a service. Those fees range from 39 to 59 to 79, depending upon what you want. If you just want access to writers and very light software, no problem.
But if you want our full service solutions designed, for example, for agencies, that are scaling content, you might need our white label solution and you might need access to our Shutterstock, Getty Image photo library. So your content managers can manage content.
Chapter 7: What are the future plans for WriterAccess and its services?
Like one content manager can manage content for 50 clients if you're an agency at Writer Access, maybe more. So the platform builds in automation.
It builds in building a team up, launching articles well in advance of when they're due and working on a month-to-month basis to place orders, manage the workflow, queue up the content, push it out directly to WordPress, Facebook, wherever it needs to go, and using our engines and software to do that. So it's like a content marketing workflow software on steroids. Mm-hmm.
Out of curiosity, I think this is going to surprise people. Maybe it won't be surprising. The customer, don't name them, but the customer that pays you the most monthly, what do they pay you monthly? We have some customers that are paying north of $100,000 a month to have content created at scale. We have customers paying $100 a month, you know, including their $39 a month fee, right?
So that's interesting because that's kind of our problem, right? We're servicing 93 different industries, more than 90 industries, right? We are servicing SMBs, tiny little startups, but we're also servicing Fortune 500 companies, right? And agencies, either micro entrepreneurs or full blown thousand person agencies that are trying to scale content often for tens of thousands of clients.
They're looking to everyone's looking to us towards give me a great writer, you know, make sure they're proficient and skilled and make sure that they can work within the confines of what our orders are. The specifications, the requirements, the rule sets that we can tag on to an order to make sure orders are done the right way.
built-in keyword optimization if you need it, checking keyword density analysis or particular requirements. I need X, Y, and Z sourced. I need to know your sources. I need you to research these five websites.
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Chapter 8: What insights can entrepreneurs gain from WriterAccess's journey?
Every project is different and we're dealing with so many different types of projects. That's the other problem, right? Because we're representing writers, editors, translators, content strategists. And guess what? We just expanded and launched designer access And we now represent designers, illustrators, animators, photographers, videographers.
So it's, and they're all working in the same platform just with two different brand names, which is a whole nother discussion in itself, Nathan. Should we change our name or do everyone loves writer access? So we're like stuck, you know, and like, you know, do we just have two twin sisters, writer access and designer access? You know, I don't know. It's our debate of the month within our team.
Baron, how many people are on your team? 12. How many engineers? A couple. Okay. Four or five? Less. Okay. Are... So I'm trying to figure out how to phrase this question. The biggest issue I see with founders that come on who are trying to build marketplaces is like Zirtual ran into this, right?
They made a move and basically moved all of their freelancer talent from just contractors to full-time employees, which jacked up their fixed expenses through the roof, but long-term could improve their economics, right? I believe you just told me 12 full-time on the team. You keep all of your 5,000 freelancers. They are contractors, not full-time employees.
The trick with that is, how do you make sure that they will fill the demand that you drive them based off what you're paying them versus them going out and getting their own work personally, like themselves? We encourage our freelancers to get their own work if they need to and or want to. We believe in the digital, the gig economy, if you will, where many of our freelancers are
I'll give you some examples. They're completely overqualified to be creating an article on vacuum cleaners, okay, or cleaning the house. But they enjoy it. They actually like that work. Oh, come on. I don't believe you for two seconds. A technical writer, you're telling me you can convince them to write an article on vacuum cleaners and love it.
Not only can I convince them, they only want to do right writing that is not within their profession because they do that all day, every day. That's fair. That's the point. Right. So, you know, I think, you know, we're very happy with with with a freelance base of writers we have and freelancers we have. We think that's the right way to build the business model.
And it's not because we don't want to pay benefits or medical benefits. It's just because most of our writers have full-time jobs and have those benefits elsewhere or have purchased their own medical. We have some writers that, you know, they make an excess of $100,000 a year with us and they buy their own medical insurance.
And we, you know, help them out if they need help on it from an HR perspective. Um, but you know, for the most part, um, you know, we, we think that the, you know, the, the freelance economy is, is here to stay and people like it and want it. And it's a healthy part of, of the global infrastructure. Just like Uber's biggest expense is going to be paying drivers.
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