My friend, “Todd”
I have a friend who, for the sake of this blog post, I’ll call Todd. He’s a very accomplished “growth guy”, or as I like to say “attention guy”.
He once told me the story of how he got to where he is now, and I have to say, it’s probably one of the most jaw-dropping entrepreneurial stories I’ve ever heard.
So, I’ll share it here, because I figure it would probably help anyone interested understand the way I look at growth, and that’s one of my main purposes with this “blog”.
Long story short, “Todd” bought up ~1,500 sponsored articles, mostly back in 2017 & 2018, that soon started making him around $3.5m/mo from the affiliate links in them. And I assume his costs to maintain the operation… minimal.
By “bought up”, I mean he paid a contributor at a publication to write a “piece” that’s usually just a listicle plastered with affiliate links. For those unaware of the term, a listicle is an article that’s really just a bunch of product recommendations, usually titled something like “Top 10 whateverthefucks” or “Must-have healthy wiggamajigs”.
Let me walk you through it, at a high level:
Essentially, Todd snapped up tons of long-tail article titles (and some not-so long tail ones) from publications such as Men’s Health, Huffington Post, Inc Magazine, etc. — and now just has to keep them near the top of Google search by staying on top of the trends in used in the space keep visitors happy (i.e. decrease his bounce rate on articles). Imagine 1,500 articles titled things like “Best Crypto Casino Available In the United States” or “Healthiest Snacks For The Carnivore Diet”.
Or in other words, Todd has designed a life for himself where he probably receives something like 500-1,000 enquiries a month, usually asking about getting a #1 spot in a few “articles” he controls – and when they seem like serious companies, he usually ends up selling them a few positions in his “pieces”, but rarely the top ones. ;)
You see, Todd and his listicle empire contemporaries have all the leverage over the companies who want mentions in them, because they took a while to realize the value of owning this sort of “attention real estate”. Most of Todd’s links show up in Google search results during the “considerational search” part of their customer journey, which is significantly more valuable than you must realize at first glance..
And because of that, every year, as he gets more and more enquiries about these “slots” on his “articles”, slowly, the race to the bottom at play here, plays out.
He once told me about how these little back and forths start off, when someone is serious – I’ll do my best below to re-enact what he described to me below. In this example, imagine you are a healthy kids’ snack brand owner who wants a top placement in 2 of his healthy food/snack listicles you found by browsing google, or using an SEO analytics tool:
Sam
hi Todd! I run Sam’s Organic Fruit Bursts, we just raised $5m led by Founders Fund and are doing about $7m/year! I’m reaching out because I wanted to enquire about getting a top 3 spot on both “10 best healthy snacks for middle schoolers” and “Best Low Sugar Snacks That Actually Taste Good” – can you let me know pricing?
Ian
hi sam! I’m very close with the top 5 brands you see in all those categories (and have 6-7 figure per year guarantees + high revenue split deals with w/ most of them), but we don’t have long term partnerships with the brands listed 6-10 those article yet, if you’re open to discussing those slots?
Now… imagine yourself going to those listicles again and noticing Annie’s Snacks and a the DTC snack company deep down you’ve been worried for about 6 months has nicer packaging, tastier products, and is already in Whole Foods, being high up on both lists.
Then imagine rushing in a slight panic to find other articles you could potentially beat them to, using Google. You find something like a half dozen more high-ranking listicles for generic keyword search combinations related to your fruit snacks, such as “best healthy gummies for kids” and “healthy snacks for kids available at most grocery stores”, and discovering Annie’s and that competitor already mentioned in most of those, too.
As far as I’m concerned, and always have been, Todd is incredibly powerful traffic provider who correctly concluded he should stop sending his traffic to companies he’s not a partner in and rightly has started moving towards total vertical integration for all the new SEO stuff he’s focused on now…
…and most founders just have no idea what they signed up for when they started something that is will never have a great K-factor, which I’ll describe as… entering the great attention war. A war that’s fought between every company, in the entire world, and that’s effectively a pure meritocracy. In it, you compete for attention, impressions, conversions, and of course, the best marketers. :)
Like Gabe Leydon from Machine said in this previous post, “The diet pill guys? Impossible to hire.”
And as someone who has spent a lot of time with founders & executives who were in the middle of losing what honestly I think is fair to call a “dark” battle in the great attention war… one in which I lot of men become boys…I would guess that about 30% of consumer founders are average at growth, and in B2B, maybe 40%…
Now that may sound like an intentional slight, but I promise that it’s a genuine guess. And I’d even bet this is true (deep down) for the majority of people who read this post (sorry, no offense meant).
And remember, the data is clear, the vast majority of startups don’t even make it stage 2, let alone a liquidity event. And as someone who’s been there alongside many of them as they were losing, man, it sucks every time.
So, the point of this story? Idk, growth is important? And most people don’t realize until it’s too late. Growth is about attention, arbitrage, and incentivizing great people to help you win the war that is building a great company, amongst many other things.
Good luck, and of course, in case you’re interested, feel free to shoot me an email about what we offer over at [Growth Partner Network.](growthpartnernetwork.com) Always open to more cool clients. :)
P.S. – in case I forget, someone remind me to write a piece on my friend who does ~$700K/day on Amazon and $3m/mo on his high-ticket “Done-For-You” Amazon offer (sort of like an info product, except it’s a service where they “do it for you”).
Folks like “Todd” and this friend, talk about the attention war. They understand the value of distribution and growth deeply, because they are growth guys themselves. And he told me something about sales psychology I’ll never forget – I could feel cooling off after it was seared unto my hippocampus, lol.