“First and foremost, this is a writing role.”
Wow. Bless.
I love writing. Somehow, I love copywriting… and content writing… and sales writing… and all the “shouldn’t this be boring?” writing that I’ve been doing since 2012 to make money, because I was too scared to be a starving novelist.
If I could just spend all day writing, I would.
And I did… for around 7 years, as a freelance copywriter and longform content specialist.
Ironically, I approached content in a very similar way to ChatGPT. I’d search out available writing on a topic online, process it in my relatively-small meat-based processor, slip into my copywriting pants to think about search intent and what the reader really wanted, and then connect that search intent to the client’s offers, solutions, or initial lead conversion goals.
And I was really good at it.
My content would average 6-7 minute read times, 2-3 times more than industry averages, and despite Google lying their ass off to the SEO community about read times not being a factor, that’s the only defensible reason I was able to rank #1 in search for keywords like:
- “copywriter” (held this one here on this website for 3 years)
- “consulting”, “consultant”, “top consulting firms”, “how to start a consulting business” (for consulting.com back when Sam Ovens owned it)
- “AB testing tools”, “AB testing guide”, and “AB testing statistics” (outranked $Billion+ Optimizely on behalf of a small CRO agency)
The year before GPT3 launched, I earned an average of $5,000 per blog post.
Not because I had some unique gift. But because almost nobody in content marketing actually understands content marketing.
As narcissistic as that may sound, let me explain.
First, the vast majority of content created for marketing is worthless. It’s made without thinking about how it is going to tangibly support either distribution or conversion goals… and it accomplishes nothing as a result.
Why was I paid $5k per blog post?
Because my posts directly created distribution by ranking in search AND directly drove conversion by being designed as conversion assets.
I’d work with clients who had spent 6-figures on content marketing for years that drove absolutely no value to the company. For these businesses (and they were everywhere), $5k for a trackable revenue driver was a no-brainer.
Second, while nobody actually paid me for this (this is what they really should have been paying me for), I understand value propositions and brand messaging.
I’m not a “wordsmith” who is going to “write words that print you money”, because copywriting does NOT sell things.
Product/market fit is what sells things. And customers are who decide what your product/market fit is. My copy and content are pulled directly from customer feedback, and the more you have to work with, the better I am at marketing your products.
When Owner.com hired me to my first in-house position as their Director of Content, I came in and did the sexy stuff they asked for:
- I ranked them #1 for “restaurant growth”
- I ranked them #1 for “restaurant marketing”
- I ranked them #1 for “restaurant promotion”
- I ranked them front page for “online ordering system”
But frankly, their target customers (restaurant owners) were never going to be coming to the company in droves from blog posts. Inbound and eventually outbound sales were the drivers, and despite my direct-report telling me to stay focused on blog posts, I used my spare hours to create sales-enablement content for the sales team that reduced no-shows and increased close rate.
I was there for the majority of their run from Series A to Series B, and ultimately, it was their outbound sales effort, supported by my content, that got them to that next milestone (not SEO-driven client acquisition).
For the last 6 years of my 13-year career, I haven’t been focused on blog posts or deliverables.
I’ve been focused on driving real KPIs and business outcomes through content marketing that fits the needs of my clients.
For some, that’s still SEO, and I can still get some impressive results.
Over the last year, I’ve:
- Ranked a client #1 for “ppc agency”
- Ranked a client #6 for “link building agency”
- Ranked myself #4 for “SEO copywriter”
But for other clients, it’s getting their email nurturing online and adding a quick 5-figures in monthly revenue to the funnels they already have running.
I spent 6 months working with ContentCreator.com solely to learn the ins and outs of video-driven content marketing, working behind-the-sciences on their $350k/m business driven entirely by video ads.
I’ve helped B2B businesses with their social media marketing. I’ve hired and managed writing teams and taught them AI-assisted workflows that help them create the same level of content 4x faster.
The most technical content I’ve created recently is helping small life sciences teams learn why they need a Regulatory Information Management System for their clinical trials, and why they should go with a modern solution from a pre-series A startup (as well as using their new Quality Management System) rather than an outdated but insanely popular legacy solution built in 2007.
I don’t know much about software QA, but I can tell you this.
In 2025, manual QA testing is a terrible use of time for in-house devs. It’s time-consuming, tedious, and repetitive (pains that scale with the size of the software), and more importantly, it fits ideally within the scope of modern AI’s capabilities… capabilities you cannot afford to miss out on.
While anyone can use AI to help with QA, QA Wolf has spent the last 6 years mastering the use of AI for this exact purpose. We can do it better, more efficiently, and more affordably than any in-house process you can build for yourself, which is exactly why household names like Mailchimp, Salesloft, AutoTRADER.ca, and even Napster (yes that Napster), along with hundreds of other companies, have chosen to outsource their QA and test automation to QA Wolf.
With QA Wolf, you aren’t paying for labor hours. You are paying for test coverage and results. We create, maintain and run Playwright tests 5x faster than ANYTHING else on the market, and we’re the top choice on G2, Clutch, and Trust Radius, because 92% of customers release faster, 90% eliminate post-release hot-fixes, and 85% increase revenue.
If you’re interested in saving $10k per month per engineer with a service that delivers 80% automated E2E test coverage for web & mobile apps in just WEEKS (not years), click here to try our 90-day pilot.
I’d be happy to tackle a test assignment as part of the interview process to show you what I can do in breaking down a technical concept for a specific audience.
I know I don’t have the type of in-house experience some companies would be looking for in this position, but for a company disrupting an entire industry in a rapidly-evolving market, do you really want someone who has spent the last 10 years running an identical, outdated playbook at 2-3 different companies?
Give me an interview, and I’ll impress you… with my humility.
But seriously, though, I’m a no-ego marketer when working on a team. It works or it doesn’t. Opinions are meaningless. Let’s test it.
Thank you for your time and consideration,
Jacob McMillen
