

Ask HN: Have the non-tech self-employed been abandoned? - DanI-S

My mother in law is self-employed as a Tai Chi instructor. She doesn't have the time or the knowledge it takes to promote herself online. She is losing business because of her aging website, lack of SEO and limited knowledge of online advertising.<p>I suspect that her situation is shared by many thousands of others.<p>Does HN know where someone like her could find a trustworthy party who can evaluate her requirements and build the simple online presence she needs, at a cost that is appropriate for a very small business?<p>If nobody is doing this right now, what is the cause? Although the market is large, I suspect that those knowledgeable in online marketing and SEO can make far more working outside of the price range of people like my mother in law. On the other hand, the things she needs are elementary enough that they would be very little work for someone with the knowledge.<p>It seems like there should be an alternative for small business owners that beats hiring their neighbour's 14 year old son.
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noahc
The only way to make this work is to offer small businesses a 'package'
solution and not consulting.

Small business consulting sucks because of 1,000 reasons, but mostly because
you aren't paid anything, aren't paid on time and are viewed more as a
technology slave than a consultant.

The package idea gets around the later, but you still have payment issues.

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tgriesser
Right now I'm working on a startup called Get On Social, which addresses
exactly the market you've identified. The premise is simple - reducing updates
on Facebook Pages, Twitter, and LinkedIn down to the simplest means possible -
a single daily email which prompts a business owner for updates with their
business, at a reasonable price of $10/mo. This is a steal in comparison to
the hundreds of dollars a month some small biz's are shelling out to "social
media consulting agencies" which essentially act as a proxy for their
business's message.

We're pretty limited in our features right now, but we've already gotten
awesome reviews from the demographic you've mentioned, non-tech self employed
who understand that there is a need to keep a good presence online but don't
have the time nor desire to learn a new UI's, remember to log into multiple
accounts per day, and determine what and how to post.

Some difficulties we've encountered are:

1\. The amount of support that goes into something as simple as signing up for
a web-app 2\. Many business owners still don't trust using a credit card
online and 3\. Require a face-to-face meeting before they make any decisions
on something

It is definitely an undeserved market, but also one that requires more offline
networking, development, and explanation - not just A/B testing a landing page
and getting good links on popular tech blogs.

Link: <http://www.getonsocial.com>

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a3camero
What do you mean by "evaluate her requirements and build the simple online
presence she needs"?

If it's custom work based on a spec developed by interviewing her, it's going
to take a while to do. It's probably not going to be "simple". Maybe simple
off-the-shelf software will work for her though, how about Wordpress?

Actual SEO takes a long time to do and has a very long-term (re: months). This
will be costly.

Can she afford online advertising? It's expensive (see yesterday's discussion
of AdMob).

Sounds like at least a couple weeks of full-time work. How much would that
cost at your mother's Tai Chi instructor rate? 80 x $50/hr? Many web
consultants charge more. Even at $50/hr that's at least $4k + the inevitable
extra time required.

Sounds expensive and not so simple. This probably will come off sounding
really harsh about your question but cost is what it really comes down to.
There's a gap between what people need to charge to make it work for them and
what small businesses like your mother's are likely willing to pay. How can
that be closed? Standard software. Not evaluating her requirements.

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DanI-S
It's certainly true that a fully custom solution costs more money than is
available. However, there are only a finite number of custom solutions out
there. Once you've built a solution for one Tai Chi instructor, a very similar
solution will work for most other Tai Chi instructors, as well as Karate
instructors and piano instructors and the guy who will teach you how to
arrange flowers.

I think that a large enough organization (even a loose collective of
individuals sharing best practices) could reduce per-customer overhead
sufficiently to allow this to work at scale. With a collective memory of
thousands of 'unique' (but only to a point) situations, it'd be far less
costly to offer custom service.

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sixtofour
I don't know much about marketing or SEO, these are merely the uninformed
impressions I had when I read your post. Anyone who knows better, please jump
in.

"She doesn't have the time or the knowledge it takes to promote herself
online."

It sounds like her problem is less her web site, and more her lack of time or
ability to market her business.

If she can't market her business, then an improved online presence would end
up being an ineffective "build it and they will come" project.

A marketing web site is just a tool, and your mother in law should be actively
using her tools, not buying them and laying them down.

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DanI-S
The 'online presence' referred to includes getting started with marketing, not
just creating a web page in isolation - there are tonnes of companies out
there who already do that.

When you're not making a huge amount per hour, but you need to support
yourself, it just isn't possible to spend tremendous amounts of your precious
time on learning how to do social media and SEO.

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Sundog
Well like...I'm in this market, DanI, but I've never considered tai chi
instructors because I figured they don't have the kind of margins that would
make it worth my time.

You're absolutely right, though, that working with your mother would give
someone like me standardized assets and procedures that could be resold with
minimal work to other tai chi instructors.

I think a3camero might be overestimating the time it would take to accomplish
something like this, but I admittedly had never considered that industry for
the reason he mentioned, ie: the price of the services your mother is
offering.

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TWAndrews
That sounds like a pretty good business opportunity. Simple SEO for small
businesses.

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Sundog
As an info product or software?

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Hisoka
The problem is that most of these people can't afford to pay a lot for this
service.

