content creation report

In this report, we’re giving our Write Blog readers one of the most intensive insights we’ve ever put together on our internal content production. This report is a real look at the content creation our team undertook for our clients for one year. We’ve never done a transparent income report before on the Write Blog, so this is the first one. The data below comes from our e-commerce Content Shop, and the month-by-month data is generated from inside our own platform as over 50-60 monthly clients order from us. Two years ago, our consistent top selling service was general blogs, and our team was producing over a million words per month. This year, our top seller was industry expert blogs. We saw a major transition in demand from general writers into expert writers th­is year, comparatively from 2018 to 2019. We believe this will only continue, as content marketers realize the level they need to hit to perform well with readers and Google. Across even our highest-volume client accounts, industry expert writers are now becoming a “must-have” over a more generalized, non-expert voice. This is a necessary evolution, as Google continues to enforce E-A-T (Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness) and Y-M-Y-L (an even higher level of quality needed for Your Money or Your Life industries) in ranking content in search results. Expert authors and creators are absolutely a must for brands and publishers today. Without further ado, let’s get into our year-to-date content creation recap. New here? Read the story of how Express Writers was founded. 2019 Content Creation Report: A Year in the Life of A 500,000+ Word/Month Content Production Team Our Top 6 Hottest Content Creation Service Offerings for the Year Expert Blogs Custom-Quoted Projects Expert Web Pages Custom Images Product Descriptions Blogging Plans [bctt tweet=”500,000+ words written per month? ✍️ It’s true, for an agency with 90 writers on staff! Read @JuliaEMcCoy’s first-ever income and production report for @ExpWriters in this Write Blog.” username=”ExpWriters”] 3 Content Creation Insights from Our Year of Content Production in 2019 I founded Express Writers back in 2011, eight years ago. Read my story here, and if you want the FULL, unabridged story (including how I escaped a cult!), sign up for my memoir on my entrepreneurial journey launching in February of 2020. I’m thrilled to see our company continue to stand and grow in the industry, and 2019 was another great year for Express Writers. We had the opportunity to partner with and collaborate on some incredible content projects, serving clients all around the world with fabulous written content for their blog, site, PR, social media, advertising, and other copy needs. 1. Quality Over Quantity in Team Size Jeff Bezos said it best: “Every internal team should be small enough that it can be fed with two pizzas.” (He continues to apply this rule in Amazon’s upper management.) After surviving eight years of HR trenches, I’ve found that my leadership runs best when it’s a small, productive team of people. We don’t have crossovers, we avoid ‘too many cooks in the kitchen,’ and everyone works together incredibly well. [bctt tweet=”.@JuliaEMcCoy says a small team is best. ‘You don’t need a massive team to produce amazing content. After surviving eight years of HR trenches, I’ve found that my leadership runs best when it’s a small, productive team of people.’  ” username=”ExpWriters”] You also don’t need a massive team to produce amazing content. We have 90 writers on staff, and 30-40 are always busy full-time—several of whom work and train directly under me. The others remain on-call for various niche project. One writer only writes content for a luxury yachting brand; another only writes content on outdoor sports, fly-fishing and hunting. One is a retired J.D. that writes copy for legal websites and blogs. Those are just some examples of the niche writers we’ve head-hunted to add to the team. While our writing and editing team stays around ninety people consistently, our leadership team has stayed small this year. Our management and leadership team is less than six people. Korilynn (writing/editorial team management), myself (marketing/HR), Josh (our CTO), Lorien (client onboarding and assistance), Kira (scheduled for calls by appointment, on-staff Content Strategist), and Danielle (our content and editorial specialist, as well as support for my courses). 2. Higher Word Count Doesn’t Always Mean More Revenue High revenue doesn’t always correlate to a high volume of words and production, as you’ll see from the statistics below. In fact, many times, it’s quite the opposite for our team. For example, a general blog can cost $45; a single 500-word page of a case study by one of our top-tier marketing writers can cost $150. Typically, the higher the quality desired, the higher the price; and less words can end up being involved in a project like that as opposed to a lower-quality, higher-word count project. So, this has pushed me towards ways we can work smarter, not just harder. [bctt tweet=”Higher ‘production’ doesn’t always equal more revenue. Work smarter, not harder. This and other lessons from @JuliaEMcCoy’s year-end report for @ExpWriters 6 MILLION word/year: ” username=”ExpWriters”] Our lowest-revenue month was a month where we were completing a big general content project for a client, and our content creation was ridiculously high-volume. But our income was low. Since general content is one of our lowest-priced services, that was a low-revenue month. 3. Evergreen Business Growth is the Best Growth The biggest catalyst for our growth continues to be our own Express Writers’ Write Blog, which is a “slow and steady” race—reminiscent of a turtle plodding forward, day after day. We haven’t taken a vacation from blogging in eight years. I’m three months ahead with the content schedule, and we publish a blog once every Tuesday. I also publish a YouTube video every third Monday. After eight years, our blog is now at 100,000 visitors/month. [bctt tweet=”Slow and steady growth is the best growth, @JuliaEMcCoy says. It’s taken them eight years to grow the Write Blog to the presence it has today … Read more