[Top Agency Series] Scaling a Content Agency With David Tile of Article-Writing Co.

David Tile is the Founder and CEO of Article-Writing Co., a rapidly expanding content creation agency in North America. He has a proven track record of transforming businesses by providing top-quality content that significantly improves their SEO ranking, enhances websites with compelling and industry-relevant blogs and website copy, and drives successful email campaigns.

David’s expertise extends beyond content creation to transforming emerging entrepreneurs and C-suite executives into thought leaders. Before establishing Article-Writing Co., David served as the Chair of Marketing & Engagement of Sunnybrook Next Generation and as a research analyst at Northstar Research Partners.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

• [03:35] David Tile on the inception of Article-Writing Co.
• [11:16] Article-Writing Co.’s hiring process and its evolution
• [15:43] SEO strategies for growing a brand 
• [22:00] David shares some content marketing strategies for growing a business 
• [26:10] Article-Writing Co.’s success stories 
• [33:25] Growth through acquisition 
• [40:26] David explains how he vetted his first acquisition deals 
• [49:28] The experience of acquiring two business at once
• [54:10] How to evaluate a company during an acquisition

In this episode…

In the present digital era, where AI is taking the world by storm, running a successful content creation agency is challenging. So, what growth strategies can you learn from someone who’s successfully grown his agency during this time?

Despite the competition, David Tile, a content marketing and SEO expert, has found a way to grow his agency by leveraging the strategy of acquisitions. By acquiring other companies, businesses can expand their offerings and reach new markets, all while gaining access to new talent and resources. David shares his journey of scaling a content creation agency through acquisition to serve as the ultimate solution for busy executives to build their brand online through high-quality content that significantly improves their SEO ranking.

Listen to this episode of the Inspired Insider Podcast with Dr. Jeremy Weisz as he welcomes David Tile, Founder and CEO of Article-Writing Co., to discuss how he grew his agency. David discusses the genesis of Article-Writing Co., its hiring process, SEO and content marketing strategies for growing a business, and growth through acquisition.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• David Tile on LinkedIn | X
• Article-Writing Co.
• Nerdy Joe
• Cascade Virtual
• Mavericks podcast

Special Mention(s):

• Second Bite Podcast
• Smart Agency Masterclass Podcast
• Trust Me, I’m Lying: Confessions of a Media Manipulator by Ryan Holiday

Related episode(s):

• “[Top Agency Series] Growth Through Acquisitions – What is Your KPI and Northstar? With Jason Swenk” on the Inspired Insider Podcast
• “Building a Great Team and More Helpful Insights with Jason Swenk Host of The Smart Agency Master Class Podcast” on the Inspired Insider Podcast
• “[Top Agency Series] Most Valuable Advice When Selling Your Agency With Todd Taskey of Potomac Business Capital” on the Inspired Insider Podcast
• “[SaaS Series] Tips To Thrive in the SaaS Space With Sujan Patel” on the Inspired Insider Podcast

Quotable Moments: 

• “Nothing matters until the rubber hits the road.”
• “When you’re publishing a blog on your website, it should be rooted in a really strong SEO hypothesis.”
• “A good agency should trade in the 2-4X EBITA range.”

Episode Transcript

Intro  0:01 

You are listening to Inspired Insider with your host, Dr. Jeremy Weisz.

Jeremy Weisz  0:22 

Dr. Jeremy Weisz here founder of inspiredinsider.com I talk with inspirational entrepreneurs and leaders today is no different. I have David Tile of article-writing.co, also nerdyjoe.com and also cascadevirtual.com. The man is busy. David, before I formally introduce you, I always like to mention other shows people should check out of the podcast. Since this is part of the top agency series. I’ve had Jason Swenk on a couple times, he talked about how he built his agency up to eight figures and then sold it and then how over the past couple of years, they’ve been buying up agencies, which is interesting. He’s also got an agency group where he helps agency owners grow as well. He’s got a great podcast Smart Agency Master Class. Also, Todd Taskey, this, you’ll like this one, David, actually, and we’re going to talk about this Todd Taskey helps pair private equity with agencies, he’s got the Second Bite Podcast. And he basically talks about the valuation space in the agency world what’s going on, he finds that sometimes the agencies make more on the second bite than they do on the first when they’re talking about private equity. So super interesting interview, really experienced guy there. So that’s a really good one. And this episode is brought to you by Rise25. At Rise25 we help businesses give to and connect to their dream 100 relationships and partnerships. And how do we do that we actually do that by helping you run your podcasts. We’re an easy button for a company to launch and run a podcast we do the accountability, the strategy and the full execution. David call ourselves a magic elves that work in the background and make it look easy for the host and the companies, they could just create great content and great relationships. You know, for me, the number one thing in my life is relationships. I’m always looking at ways to give to my best relationships. And I found no better way over the past decade to profile the people and companies I most admire and share the world with their work in. So if you thought about podcasting, you should if you have questions, you can go to rise25.com. David has a podcast to you check it out the Mavericks podcast, I’ve checked out a few episodes. Really good. So check that out. And I’m excited. David Tile is the founder of article-writing.co. They help companies with content to impact their SEO, ranking their websites, engaging with industry, relevant blogs and website copy, because ultimately, it helps bring in more leads to that company. Also, he runs nerdyjoe.com or his team does they help companies get leads through cold email cascadevirtual.com is a virtual assistant company. That is your success partner. He’s a serial entrepreneur, a 13-year agency owner, and he’s 6’8”. So if you challenge them to hockey or basketball, you watch out. So David, thanks for joining me.

David Tile  3:10 

Oh, it’s a pleasure. Thanks for having me.

Jeremy Weisz  3:12 

So talk about, you are really interesting, just talking about article that and people can find it article-writing.co. But we’re going to talk about I love your methodology for PR, and how you build this whole like, kind of underground empire before you actually reach out but talk about Article-Writing company what you do first?

David Tile  3:35 

Yeah, right, not Well, thanks for having me. I’m excited to check out The Smart Agency Podcast and Todd’s as well those sound like fast episodes and yeah, that’s great. Let me tell you how we started and how I started out we started royal we started a Article-Writing Co. 13 years ago, I came out of college. And I spent a few years working with my father he was in consumer insights and we built a actually spent a few years at university during the summers building a social media research division. So I was heavy with a director they’re doing like right on the sort of The Proving Grounds with, you know what, right as Twitter and Facebook and YouTube, all of these, we’re just sort of starting out. And I just sort of came out of college, I’ve been on the floor with product development. I’ve been on the floor with new business development, we were pitching to enterprise we’re pitching to, we had a bunch of clients like big banks here and I’m just like, I I have to be an entrepreneur. I have no choice. But to just try something especially, you’re young, you’ve got I’m living at home I’ve got no expense base so, thanks, Dad for incubating the 21, 22, 23 years old. 30 years ago, he founded a consumer insights firm called Northstar Research Partners, he grew, he actually grew that up to be a fairly sizable firm at its peak, with over 150 folks up, he had maybe 15, Toronto, a big office in New York 30-40 and other big office in London, England and other maybe 50. There. So, I think at its peak, it was doing 40-50 million with a fairly sizable team. So here I am, I’m at a college and I started an auction website, I grabbed that I went on to oDesk, which was the predecessor to Upwork. And I grabbed a development team out of in the end, for 6, 7, 8 months, I was just grinding on developing the synonyms going nowhere, like absolutely just dead end after dead end. And it’s an auction website that had a bunch of special mechanics, we were really, really compelled by, or at least I was compelled to build something and compelled by the modeling there, couldn’t do it. I ended up…

Jeremy Weisz  6:16 

It’s tough, because it’s a dump. It’s a, you know, double-sided marketplace. So it’s tough.

David Tile  6:21 

It has to work, right? Like the technology has to work, if the second marker isn’t perfectly the exact same in Toronto and Calgary and Montreal and Miami and wherever it doesn’t, it doesn’t work, right. So we couldn’t figure it out. So I ended up just, I put it on the shelf for a bit. And I started picking up some freelance writing jobs on oDesk. And I immediately just to sort of say, okay, like this, dude, this thing is not happening, you can’t spend an unlimited amount of time not making money. So I just to pick up some side income, I started picking up some freelance writing jobs. And I swear, right out of the gate, I just uncovered a goldmine, where I ran into some relationships where and you know, we’re not talking, like break the bank on a per word or a per article basis. As in, I think some of the first jobs I took were like three bucks or four bucks an article just okay, great, whatever, right? It’s better than nothing. But I ended up running into some relationships with some SEO agencies, and with a subcontract agency with a bigger content firm. And that was where I ran into Legal Zoom. That’s where I ran into Shopify. That’s where I ran into eBay. And all of a sudden, we had big volume projects, with the through, you know, through the SEO agencies through the subcontract, you will know answers.com They are in that in that lovely group of logos, about four months into hustling off Elance and off of oDesk. I ran into answers.com. And again, I’m 23. I’ve been doing this like for two months or three months, whatever, right? And I run it to answers.com. And they said, hey, we’re producing 5,000 articles a week, oh, my gosh, how many can you write and they were paying 13, 14, 15 maybe 16 bucks an article. And this was like back again, this is 13 years ago, back in the heyday of SEO, where every single article had to be HTML coded had to be in a .txt, had to be like that you had to have a whole bunch of complex little coding markers. Like you couldn’t use smart apostrophes. If they uploaded it to their CMS, it would break the whole CMS right? So we built a program with them, first week was 50 articles. Second week was 100 articles. I ran up again, 23 no idea what I’m doing. Didn’t have the team didn’t have the infrastructure, nothing. I ran up to volume with them for up to 1,000 articles every week. I made the promise of Friday. They were like, okay, Friday 5 p.m. deadline. There were a few. You know, there were more than a few weekends were that that Friday, promise turned into a Saturday 9 a.m. just an all nighter with my I hired a dude out of an editor out of the Dallas Morning News. So it was me and my buddy Jake down in Dallas, and we were just up all night three, four am would roll around we’d call a couple writers up in the Philippines. Hey, you know this guy missed his assignment. Can you pick up another few articles this morning, please. So that was where we started.

Jeremy Weisz  9:53 

How many writers did you have the title. Oh, like 1,000 articles. Yeah. How many writers completely?

David Tile  10:01 

Oh, I mean, at least 100, we were like, we hustled together, massive global crew of writers to execute. And, you know, we’re talking, okay, so we’re getting 14 bucks an article, maybe the writer gets five or six bucks in article, but then we have to have a copy editor for content. Right? Okay, like margins are slim. Does this meet brief, but we also had to have a line editor for all of that coding. Because again, it’s not just if you if you do the wrong apostrophe, you’ll break the machine. But also, it was SEO back in the day, you had like, super, super awkward key phrases and keywords that had to be in the third paragraph, the second line and the third paragraph, and you had all these your primary and a secondary keyword, you had a bunch of crazy briefing for, you know, H2s and, and all the rest. So it was, it was fun time.

Jeremy Weisz  10:59 

Talk about the hiring process. I’m sure you find it since then. But what was hiring 100 writers is no joke, right? Even if you’re just taking people who have a pulse. So what was your writing process then? And what’s it look like now?

David Tile  11:16 

The process end was, if you have a pulse, and you want to make a little money? Well, we’ll give you a shot. And by the way, like, I am virtually serious. I mean, we would look at clips, so we would look at portfolio, which was so easy to fake, obviously. And then we would trial by fire. So, the first few articles, you had a 24-hour deadline. And if you missed it, we would never talk to you again. Right. And by the way, it was always trial by fire. So if you ever missed a deadline, if you were out of our system, it was too high velocity, it was too, we were a content factory, right? It was an assembly line. And if you were a piece of piece of our machinery that broke, we had to discard on foot, like, I don’t mean to undercut the human element here. But you know, there were very, very few exceptions, and it was just a pure play trial by fire.

Jeremy Weisz  12:14 

Were they like going in, were they even? Because even probably to get 100 people you’re looking at hundreds and hundreds. So would they felt like an application? You’re just like, okay, it looks decent, or what was it like that?

David Tile  12:27 

Literally, exactly that? Yeah, it was like we had a massive funnel across, you know, everywhere. Facebook groups and we were everywhere we could everywhere we didn’t pay a level referral bonus. So we had little pockets of you know, five or six or 10 people who all sort of knew each other, right? So we had and that was always the best. But now we were massive funnel to intake. And then you know, little, like a tiny little application form phone number email, how do we add us on Skype, right? Just the basics. And then hey, like, let’s, let’s get into it. We’ve got an assignment. here’s the here’s the briefing, right? If you have any questions, let’s hop on a quick call, and then go and get it like you got 24 hours.

Jeremy Weisz  13:17 

That’s kind of the best way to do it. It’s a test project. I mean, you either you sink or swim in that point.

David Tile  13:23 

Yeah, but can I tell you something? I still kind of live by that philosophy now in all of my hiring, I think resumes are trash. I think like I think it’s like slept swiping right on Tinder when you decide to say hi to somebody after you look at the resume, it’s as basic as that. And interviews are trash, like as much as you want to put people through the wringer and give them trial. Nothing matters until the rubber hits the road and they’re in there on the ground and they’re working with you and you make a decision to hire somebody, you get them in your company, you’re working with them. It’s great, right? But they’ve got to show up. And that’s the like, that’s, I look I’ve earned and I’ve owned that philosophy over a long time — that’s just my own personal thought.

Jeremy Weisz  14:17 

How has the hiring process changed now?

David Tile  14:21 

Well, if you’re talking specifically about Article-Writing Co. and better writers, it’s the exact I like literally we are the philosophy with like the SEO philosophy has changed obviously dramatically over the last 13 years and every cycle every year, every two years is a massive SEO update. And it’s always been towards, you know, away from gamification away from black hat and gray hat tactics where you’re keyword stuffing white by the way, you can even look at our brand name is article writing company, we bought the brand, we bought the domain name the brand and on an SEO bet you search article writing company like that was our that was our bet. And by the way, it’s proved reasonably fruitful over the years. It’s evolved. It’s evolved tremendously. So with every iteration with every cycle they move away from black hat gray hat, like games, where they move towards more normal, reasonable PR and communications best practices and the writing’s on the wall. Let me tell you. About a year into my business, I ran into this dude out in Montreal, who was a super affiliate. So he had a few websites, this will be a little revealing, so forgive me, but they had to hit a few websites in adult dating. Okay, so this is before Tinder, it’s before Bumble. And he had these websites that would rank for things like how to get laid tonight, right? And he would rank so again, you’d rank for a keyword like how to get laid, and then the website where a few 100 pages, with guides and testimonials and stories, but also with reviews, specific adult adults dating services, like Ashley Madison, etc. Okay. And so I met this guy, I think he had three or four websites, they were each doing quarter million dollars to 300 grand a year. So crazy. He’s doing a million bucks doing more than that, whatever. I met this guy, and I basically pitched to him. I’ll get to get his SEO strategy, but I basically pitched him on a massive assembly line, where every week, we would sort of play it out as an assembly line. So the first week, we would brief out a website, pull out all of the, you know, like, what’s the domain name? What’s the SEO hypothesis? What is the world of opportunity with that SEO hypothesis? That’s week one. So project a week one is briefed, check week two, Project A gets written. So we would write three 400 Pages for that whole website. And then we would brief project B. Okay, then week three, we would write the SEO contents, we had a massive set of XML documents, that was all the meta SEO copy for Project A, we would brief Project C and we would write project B, right. And then in week four, the project a would get published, you had a small team out in India that would publish the websites, we would brief project D, we would write Project C and we would do the SEO. So we had an assembly line where every week we were producing a new website, okay, this guy, just as a quick aside, he ran his business up to over $20 million over the five years or so that we work together. But his strategy, his SEO strategy was what was called a private blog network. Okay, so in order to rank in order to produce backlinks in order to rank these money websites, these core websites that we would write that we were writing, he had a network of 12,000 private blogs, so just little schmucky, fake blogs that would all link into the primary money site, where he would obviously get right.

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