How We Became 'Ramen Profitable' And Grew Organically Through SEO

Phil Strazzulla

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Published: November 9th, 2022

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Phil Strazzulla

Founder, SelectSoftware Reviews

$3.38K

revenue/mo

Founders

Employees

SelectSoftware Re...

selectsoftwarereviews.com

from Cambridge

started January 2019

$3,375

revenue/mo

Founders

Employees

Discover what tools Phil recommends to grow your business!

Discover what books Phil recommends to grow your business!

The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business Whe... Ben Horowitz

The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life Alice Schroeder

The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon Brad Stone

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Want more updates on SelectSoftware Reviews? Check out these stories:

1. This VC Taught Himself How To Code And Is Bootstrapping His Own Startup (2019) ➜

This is a follow up story for SelectSoftware Reviews. If you're interested in reading how they got started, published over 4 years ago, check it out here.

Hello again! Remind us who you are and what business you started.

Hey there, my name is Phil Strazzulla, and I’m the Founder of SelectSoftware Reviews. You can read all about my original founding story here. This post will be an update since that initial article.

Our business helps organizations to find and buy the right HR software through free, in-depth buyer guides (for example, one on finding the right HRIS). We leverage experts to write what we think is the best advice online, and then put it on our site and our newsletter of over 20,000 HR practitioners.

We’re now a ramen profitable business growing at over 100% and with big aspirations to be the go-to source of information in our space!

Tell us about what you’ve been up to. Has the business been growing?

We’ve grown a lot since our first Starter Story and are now “ramen profitable” - which means we can pay our bills and are default alive.

The key to our growth has been a combination of SEO along with building a brand in our space. We have such a small niche in HR, it’s been effective for us to build community through unique content, and a Q&A forum.

We also have a growing newsletter, and a job board for PeopleOps who want to find amazing jobs, many of which are remote.

We’re definitely in a very competitive niche, but we’re seeing that if we can deliver high-quality content, then we can grow our audience and continue to grow our business.

One big milestone is that we have successfully sold some sponsorships into our newsletter. While the first sale was just $500, I think this is a revenue opportunity that is closer to $3-4k/mo right now, and my goal is that a year from now we will be booking six figures annually here.

What have been your biggest challenges in the last year?

One major challenge for us has been managing a remote team of contractors. Communicating across time zones, cultures, and priorities means that balls can be dropped.

We’ve tried to address this by implementing Slack, weekly hangouts, and better communication norms through a document that outlines response times, working hours, etc.

To be honest, we haven’t quite figured it out yet, but are making a lot of progress. I think our hangouts are the most impactful. We usually play trivia or another game or just talk. This has allowed us to get to know each other better and have more empathy, which translates to working more effectively.

What have been your biggest lessons learned in the last year?

The biggest lesson for me has been to focus. Like many entrepreneurs, I like to chase new opportunities. And, there are many for us to tackle.

For example, we could get into other areas beyond HR Tech, sell intent data, do a cost-per-lead model, start a news site…the list goes on.

Listening to this podcast a few weeks ago has made me realize how important focus is. “Keep the main thing the main thing” is now my new motto. And, by cutting things out, I’m able to get a lot more done.

This has been especially true this year after having my first kiddo and finding my time stretched very thin. But, taking out all these extraneous meetings and curiosities has let me drive forward what matters.

What’s in the plans for the upcoming year, and the next 5 years?

My plan is to grow our editorial team of expert technology reviewers so that we can keep producing high-quality content that helps our readership. If we do that, we will be in good shape.

We’re making a lot of progress and you can see from the authors on our site that we are finding highly qualified experts to write for us. For example, this post on outsourcing your HR is written by someone with 10 years of HR experience, who now runs an HR outsourcing company.

Beyond growing our content team, it’ll be important for us to find new ways to monetize our content so that we can fuel growth. I think we are just starting to figure out how to make money from our business!

What’s the best thing you read in the last year?

A great book I’ve recently read is Cialdini’s Influence. It’s a lot of super practical advice for anyone doing sales, marketing, or trying to avoid getting swindled by influencers.

It’s so good that Warren Buffett sent the author free Berkshire stock as a thank-you for writing such a great book!

Advice for other entrepreneurs who might be struggling to grow their business?

I think of entrepreneurship as trying to shoot a hockey puck into the net from center ice, while someone is punching you in the stomach. You just have to keep your balance and keep shooting. Eventually, one will go in.

Now, you can make sure your shots are well-timed and in the right direction…but there is always going to be an element of luck involved.

So, do the things you need to take care of the “punches” (meditate, workout, see friends), and aim as well as you can.

Are you looking to hire for certain positions right now?

I’d love to hire anyone with expertise in b2b software, and specifically HR software who’s looking to write about tools. Feel free to connect with me on Linkedin if that’s you!

Where can we go to learn more?

Here is a link to our site, and here is a link to our LinkedIn profile.

Those are the best places to check out what we are doing!