How Ethan Isaacson Earns 6 Figures/Year From His One-of-a-Kind Legal Citation Software
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Ethan Isaccson is a lawyer from Ohio, and he had a problem. He was tired of struggling to format legal citations. The process is difficult, frustrating, and labor-intensive. And since he was having a hard time with this, he assumed other legal professionals were too.
So what did Ethan do? He decided to simplify the process by creating a niche tool for legal industry people. He created LegalEase Citations, which uses AI-powered algorithms to create a wide variety of 100% accurate legal citations in a matter of seconds.
He was right in assuming that other people also struggled with this part of legal writing. His tool has so far been extremely successful. Today he’s earning 6 figures per year and has an annual growth rate of around +30%.
Keep reading to find out:
- Why he created his tool
- How he markets his business
- His thoughts on SEO
- His keyword research strategy
- How he builds links
- His content creation process
- How he grows his email list
- How many hours he works on his business
- His favorite resources and tools
- His greatest challenge
- His main accomplishment
- His biggest mistake
- The advice he'd give to other entrepreneurs
Contents
- Meet Ethan Isaacson
- Why He Created LegalEase Citations
- How Much Money Ethan is Making
- His Top Marketing Strategy
- The Importance of SEO
- Ethan’s Content Creation Process
- His Email List
- How Many Hours Per Day Ethan Works on the Business
- Reaching His Current Revenue Level
- Ethan’s Favorite Resources
- His Top 3 Tools
- Ethan’s Biggest Challenge
- His Greatest Accomplishment
- His Main Mistake
- His Advice for Other Entrepreneurs
Meet Ethan Isaacson
Hi, my name is Ethan, and I’m the founder and CEO of LegalEase Citations. My experience is a bit unique as I have a background in both programming and law.
I’m 30 years old and am a licensed attorney in Ohio. I received my law degree from Case Western Reserve University School of Law, and it's been an exciting journey to get to where I am today, combining my passions and skills to run my own business.
Why He Created LegalEase Citations
I created the company because I had a real need for it while I was a law student working for a federal judge. I struggled with formatting legal citations for legal writing, which are complex, time-consuming, and difficult.
I couldn't find a good solution to my problem and that of my classmates in law school and colleagues in the legal profession. I decided to create a solution myself and developed the web application LegalEase Citations.
LegalEase Citations is a web application that helps legal professionals and students correctly format legal citations quickly and easily. It is designed to be user-friendly and efficient, allowing users to quickly create accurate legal citations, saving them time and effort.
I started by trying to understand the problems that legal professionals and law students faced regarding legal citation formatting. I then began developing the web application and testing it with a small group of users to get feedback and improve it.
Since then, I have grown the business by constantly updating and improving it based on user feedback to better serve the legal community's needs.
How Much Money Ethan is Making
Our revenue is currently in the six figures per year, and our annual growth rate is around +30%. It's been a great journey, and we're continuing to grow, which is really exciting.
His Top Marketing Strategy
When it comes to promoting LegalEase Citations, our number one strategy is search engine marketing (SEM) in combination with content marketing.
With SEM, we run ads on search engines like Google and Bing to ensure that our target audience (law students and legal professionals) finds our website easily while searching for legal citation formatting. This allows us to reach out to people who are already interested in the topic and increase their chances of becoming a user of LegalEase Citations.
With content marketing, we create and share valuable and relevant information about legal citation formatting, such as blog posts, videos, infographics, etc. This helps us to establish ourselves as a credible and trustworthy source of information in the legal field.
By providing helpful information on legal citation formatting, we can attract more potential customers in the legal profession and increase the chances of them becoming paying customers.
Both SEM and content marketing work together to increase the visibility of LegalEase Citations and drive more traffic to the website.
Rather than developing a unique marketing strategy, we’ve focused our efforts on developing a great and effective marketing strategy, which has often meant executing well on tried and tested methods.
The Importance of SEO
SEO is very important for our business because it allows us to increase our visibility and drive more traffic to our website. Optimizing our website and content for search engines makes sure that our target audience (law students and legal professionals) can find us easily when searching for legal citation formatting.
Keyword Research
We conduct comprehensive keyword research and optimize our website to increase visibility and drive more traffic.
We focus on legal citation-related keywords such as "legal citation formatting," "Bluebook citation," "ALWD citation," "legal citation generator," and others.
We start by identifying the keywords that we’re currently ranking for and the keywords that our competitors are ranking for. Then, we use keyword research tools to find the most relevant and profitable keywords for our business, which have high search volume but low competition.
This allows us to identify keywords more likely to drive targeted traffic related to legal citations to our website. We also use keyword difficulty tools to evaluate the difficulty of ranking for each keyword, so we can prioritize the keywords we want to target and create a content strategy accordingly. This process helps us to optimize our website and increase visibility, drive more traffic, and ultimately increase revenue.
Link Building
Link building is incredibly important for LegalEase Citations as it helps us to increase our website's authority and credibility in the eyes of search engines. A strong backlink profile can help to boost our search engine rankings and drive more targeted traffic to our website.
At the moment, we are using a few different link-building strategies, such as guest blogging, broken link building, and creating valuable content that other websites would want to link to.
We have also tried reaching out to influencers in the legal profession and asking them to share their experience with LegalEase Citations. This helps to increase the trust and credibility of our brand among potential customers, which ultimately helps to drive more traffic to our website and improve our link-building.
Ethan’s Content Creation Process
At LegalEase Citations, our content creation process and strategy are focused on producing high-quality and informative content that is tailored to the needs of our target audience, which are law students, lawyers, paralegals, and other legal professionals.
We begin by identifying the topics that are most relevant and important to them, such as legal citation formatting, Bluebook citation, ALWD citation, legal citation generator, and other legal citation-related topics. Then we conduct thorough research to ensure that our content is accurate and up-to-date with the latest legal citation guidelines and standards.
Once we have a clear understanding of the topic, we create an outline for the article, focusing on the key points we want to make and the information we want to share. After that, we write the content in a conversational and engaging tone, making sure that it is easy to understand and provides value to our target audience.
We also optimize our content for search engines by including relevant legal citation keywords and ensuring that our content is well-structured and easy to navigate.
Once the content is complete, we review it for accuracy and clarity before publishing it on our website. We also use social media and email marketing to promote our content and drive more traffic to our website.
His Email List
We do have an email list, and it's an important part of our marketing strategy. We use it to connect with our target audience of law students, lawyers, paralegals, and other legal professionals and keep them updated on the latest legal citation guidelines and standards.
We also use it to inform them about new features and updates on our legal citation generator and other legal citation-related tools.
We grow our email list by offering valuable content on our blog, such as legal citation formatting tips, bluebook citation guidelines, ALWD citation examples, and other legal citation-related resources, and by using opt-in forms on our website and social media platforms to encourage people to join our email list.
How Many Hours Per Day Ethan Works on the Business
As the founder & CEO, I currently work a standard Monday to Friday, 9-5 schedule.
But during the first couple of years of the business, I put in much longer hours, working six or seven days a week, often putting in 10-12 hours per day to get the business off the ground and make it successful.
It was a lot of hard work and required a lot of dedication, but it paid off in the end. I focus on working smart and efficiently to run and grow the business.
Reaching His Current Revenue Level
It took about 5 years. I started LegalEase Citations in 2018, and it took some time to develop the product, get traction, build our customer base, and establish ourselves as a reputable and reliable service.
But I'm proud to say that our hard work and dedication paid off, and we've been able to grow our revenue year over year. We are still growing at a steady rate, and we are constantly improving our products and services to better serve our customers of law students, lawyers, and other legal professionals.
Ethan’s Favorite Resources
For early-stage startups, I highly recommend checking out resources from Paul Graham and Y Combinator. I found Paul Graham's essays to be incredibly informative and helpful when I was first getting started. And Y Combinator's resources are also great for learning about startup best practices and connecting with the startup community.
Additionally, I think the best resource for digital marketing is Ahrefs blog. I found it an excellent source of information and tips on SEO, PPC, and other digital marketing strategies.
Lastly, I recommend reading the book The San Francisco Fallacy by Jonathan Siegel, as it gives a great perspective on the startup world and helped me greatly with my startup. These resources have been a great help to me, and I believe they would be helpful for anyone looking to build something similar to LegalEase Citations.
His Top 3 Tools
There are a few tools that have been incredibly helpful for me as an entrepreneur.
The first one is LearnEnough.com, which helped me to learn to program, and it was essential for me to develop the web application LegalEase Citations.
The second one is Ahrefs, which is a powerful tool for SEO and digital marketing. It has been an essential tool to understand the legal citation keywords and help me optimize the website for search engines.
And the third tool is Asana, which is a great tool for project management as it helps me keep track of all my tasks and collaborate effectively.
These tools have been a game-changer for me and my business, they have helped me to be more organized, efficient, and stay on top of things. They have been instrumental in our success.
Ethan’s Biggest Challenge
The biggest challenge we've faced as we've grown the company has been ensuring that our legal citation generator is not only easy and fast to use but also 100% accurate.
It's a difficult task to create a tool that can handle the complexities and nuances of legal citation formatting, but we've worked hard to make sure that our users can trust the citations generated by our tool to be completely accurate and up-to-date.
Despite the challenges, we're proud to say it's been a huge success for us and our customers.
His Greatest Accomplishment
I’m incredibly proud of our progress in making formatting legal citations easy, fast, and accurate for law students, lawyers, and other legal professionals. This was no easy feat and required much hard work, dedication, and attention to detail.
Seeing the positive impact our service has had on our users and how it has helped to streamline their workflow and make their lives easier is truly the most rewarding accomplishment for me as an entrepreneur.
Knowing that we’re helping to make a real difference in the legal industry is what drives me to continue pushing forward and improving our service even more.
If I could go back to when I first started the company, I would have emphasized getting the word out there and reaching our target audience. I wish I had known the importance of marketing and how it plays a crucial role in the growth of a business.
His Main Mistake
One of the biggest mistakes we made early in our entrepreneurial journey was not focusing enough on marketing and reaching out to our target audience.
We were so focused on perfecting our legal citation generator that we didn't spend enough time and resources on getting the word out and making sure the right people knew about our product. This meant that it took us longer to gain traction and start growing our user base.
We've since learned the importance of balancing product development with marketing and outreach efforts.
His Advice for Other Entrepreneurs
My advice to other entrepreneurs who are building their businesses right now is to focus on building a product or service that you need or that addresses a pain point you have experienced. This way, you will deeply understand your target audience and their needs, making it easier to create a solution that genuinely helps solve a real-world problem.
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