

Steal These Freelance Business Ideas - casjam
http://casjam.com/steal-these-freelance-business-ideas/

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nvr219
"A podcast is a very effective channel for building an audience and building
exposure for your company. "

I'll be honest. I never use podcasts. Is it really an effective channel for
building an audience?

~~~
jonemo
I only recently warmed up to Podcasts, actually wrote a blog post with short
"reviews" of my subscription list this weekend:
<http://neubertify.tumblr.com/post/41503145301/podcasts>

I think of all online publishing media, podcasts are the hardest to execute
well, harder than blogs, and harder than video. This might not be true for
everyone, but while I can tolerate shitty writing and shitty video editing, I
just can't stand bad audio production. Bad speaking, weird accents, breathing
sounds, "uhm", each of those steal divert my attention from the content.

If you decide to start a podcast, please get some professional production
help. One podcast I found that is not produced by NPR but still doing a good
job (as well as being relevant to the HN crowd) is "This Developer's Life"
(<http://www.thisdeveloperslife.com>).

~~~
Fuzzwah
"weird accents", really?

Where are you from and what do you think is "normal". I'm an Australian
(currently living in America) who has traveled a lot, I have a lot of friends
from all over the world. I've never considered any one of them to have a
"weird accent".

Can you give me examples of podcasts which you've found difficult to listen to
due to "weird accents"?

~~~
jonemo
Weird wasn't in a negative sense, just as a qualitative descriptor of
difference from what happens to the kind of English I hear every day. I am
from Germany and I would probably find it difficult to listen to myself in an
English language podcast due to my accent.

What sounds familiar and what strange or plain wrong is probably highly
personal. For example, I've heard enough Australians speak to have a feel for
that particular variant of English. When I hear it, I notice the different
"melody" of it, but there usually isn't a sound that surprises me or comes
unexpected. It's like when I go into the Biotech building on our university
campus: They have a weird floor layout and the main staircase isn't anywhere
near the main door, but I find my way around because I got used to it.

However, when I had just moved to London as a freshman and first heard my
Australian professor speak, every other word seemed out of place. That was
just like my first trip to the Biotech building where the simple process of
walking through the corridors was constantly interrupted by doors covered 100%
in hazard signs and trying to remember the turns I took. Sure I could
understand the Australian professor just like I could find my way around the
Biotech building back then. But it took more energy than listening to a well
produced radio program or walking around the building I work in every day.

In a podcast, ideally you'd want a speaker whose voice sounds natural and
familiar so that their words convert into thoughts effortlessly, yet there are
so many different ways to speak. This is a problem you have to deal with as a
podcast producer that writers rarely have (except when writing about
aluminum/aluminium).

~~~
kranner
Fair enough, but have you considered that an unfamiliar accent may give a
podcast a unique personality for free?

That may require extra cognitive effort for the listener, but it is possible
that it could lead to better retention in the long term. Just speculating.

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krogsgard
I love the metrics idea. A lot of people collect data, not many are doing
anything with it. An easy way to turn collected data in to actionable items
would be awesome.

~~~
brianbreslin
I would definitely pay someone to handle this and do reporting for me on this.

~~~
krmmalik
This is something that I've been doing for clients for the last two years. I
could do this job for you. It's something I really enjoy, and I'm familiar
with a fair few analytics packages, GA, Mixpanel, Re-invigorate and so on. I
also think I can pick new ones up pretty fast as the principles are more
important than the technology.

Is there some way I can get in touch with you to discuss this further?

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PaulMest
I do a lot of metric analysis for other companies. It's actually one of the
ways that my company starts engagements and eventually leads to selling other
services. We start by analyzing what data is already collected.

I love looking at data and now that I've seen dozens of Google Analytics
properties and a handful of MixPanel/Flurry/Apsalar/misc. It's really easy for
me to dive in and provide actionable recommendations.

Unfortunately, most sites don't have goals with conversion rates or Webmaster
Tools (to see SEO) or have their eCommerce transactions hooked up. So it's a
bit of a pain to try to teach a new business how to set that up. We're happy
to do it for a small fee, but it takes time to get the clearance or work with
the engineering team. Then it's a matter of waiting to collect that data (if
we're talking startups or smaller businesses). Also, it seems to be a low
margin business because many businesses already don't value their existing
data so they aren't going to pay much to have someone collect even more data
they won't look at.

However, when the data is collected, you can start making easier pitches. If
we can increase your total revenue by X% we get Y% of it in the first year. If
we don't, you don't pay us.

I'm happy to provide an initial consultation for free to anybody on Hacker
News. If you find value in it, we can discuss on-going work.

Contact info is in my profile.

~~~
heliodor
Getting a cut of the revenue increase would be great, but how do you prove how
much influence you've had on the revenue increase/decrease as compared to
other steps the company took to change their fortunes? Are there any methods
that can be used to tease apart each cause and effect?

~~~
PaulMest
Generally the businesses that we have pursued this path are ones who neglect
to treat their online selling motions like a product.

For example, we are working with a client who makes "99%" of their money from
physical retail. Their focus is on opening new physical locations and their
eCommerce side is an after-thought. Their offline business is booming, but
their online visits and conversion rates have been flat for 6+ months. My team
will be taking over their site.

There is certainly a bit of faith that any change to visits will be from our
SEO, though we can specifically target long-tail terms and build reports to
show that they previously received X visits a month on these highly
convertible terms now they receive 5X. However, with conversion rate
optimization, the split-testing makes it pretty clear which changes performs
better.

When the business gets an increase in highly convertible traffic after a
flatline and additional $50,000-$500,000 in online revenue, they are very
happy.

This type of contract only works with businesses that bring in millions. For
smaller businesses or startups generating $50k-$100k/year, there are generally
smaller budgets or not enough traffic to make split-testing possible in short-
term engagements. So we'll do fixed bid consultations and short-term contracts
for $1k-$20k and possibly do a follow up 3+ months down the line. Or we will
use the split-testing and CRO service as a feeder to build trust in my team
and then try to cross-sell our other service (build a custom mobile app, web
app, or immersive advertisement).

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hexonexxon
thegrugq had a good idea. he recommended somebody should start a biz in making
online disposable social media identities. this is easy to do but takes time.
time is money so this could be a viable service though and with an easy python
script could pump out identities automatically after amassing all your fake
pictures.

you would pay them with bitcoins to create a whole online persona for you on
facebook, twitter, linkedin ect that you would use as a backup in order to
fool competitors, hackers, and govt authorities trying to track you down.

for instance your anonymous identity that publishes a democracy blog about
china gives very subtle hints to this new fake online persona you've created,
so when chinese authorities think they've found you they are in reality
chasing nothing. kind of like when hackers sit together in a channel and if
you log an entire month's worth, they start dropping personal information
either purposely or accidentally by slipping up their opsec 'hey bro i went to
that school too'.

only this time it leads to a maze of confusion instead to your front door like
Jeremy Hammond.

could bundle this with other anonmity service like running a .onion newsgroup
server for alt.binaries.messages retrieval

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esonderegger
For those of you that hire video producers, how do you go about selecting who
you work with?

Since I'm coming from a career as an audio and video engineer into the startup
world, this would seem like an obvious area to do some freelancing, but it
also seems like a chicken and egg problem with finding work and having
demos/references.

~~~
orangethirty
A portfolio is a must. Then I just interview you to see if we have work
chemistry. Afterwards I just leave you alone to do your job.

I'm actually searching for a good audio freelancer. Get in touch if you are
interested.

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krmmalik
If anyone here is looking for a "Startup Data/Metrics Analyst" as per the blog
post, please get in touch. I've done this for companies here in the UK for the
last two years, and I'm looking to expand this part of my work further. Happy
to discuss working arrangements and deals, and am open to offers.

Please see my business card if you'd like to learn more about me:
<http://krmmalik.com/me>

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shawndrost
I'd pay for any of these; email is in profile.

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snayan
The metric analysis freelancer idea really spoke to me. Anyone with experience
in this field have any suggestions for how one might break into this type of
work? I'm always drawn to blog posts and the like that deal with metrics
analysis but lack much real world experience. Any suggestions would be greatly
appreciated.

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marcamillion
I love this post....thought they would be 'lame' ideas, but I love them.

I run 5KMVP and am interested in doing the metrics idea.

If you are interested in having your startup data crunched and you sent the
key metrics on a weekly basis - reach out to me: marc+metrics @ 5kmvp.com

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olefoo
Full Service Blogger sounds ever so slightly shady; like someone who would
write pay-for-play stories and not care about the reputation they'd be
burning.

I realize that's not the intent here, but it seems like that would be a
natural equilibrium state for commercial writers.

~~~
casjam
I think you're describing the majority of freelance blog writers you'll find
on places like Elance, etc. these days.

What I meant was the blogger should deliver not only articles but all the
other (very important) tasks for running an effective blog: editorial
calendar, topic development, blogger outreach, etc. A premium blogging
service, if you will.

~~~
gabemart
As someone with a little experience and some modest success in this area, a
good full-service blogger would be _expensive_. Not only because it requires a
cluster of skills that are only tangentially related to each other and so are
relatively rare to find together, but because a person who possesses these
skills can build a good income for themselves will little investment aside
from their own time. The opportunity cost of such a person selling their time
is massive because they're exchanging long-run passive income for short-term
work-for-hire income.

I'm hesitant to estimate how much such a service would reasonably cost without
thinking about it some more, but I am very curious as to how much a startup in
a position to benefit from this kind of outsourcing thinks they could
reasonably pay.

~~~
thoughtcriminal
I agree that a person who is competent and creative enough to write solid blog
posts in a space that isn't his or her specialty is exceedingly rare. They
often have their own ideas and projects.

Honestly, most guest bloggers and freelance writers may be affordable (or even
cheap) but simply aren't that good. The writing is often bland or immature.
Not content I would want representing my brand.

To get a creative and smart wordslinger to run your blog and manage your brand
like that would be expensive.

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nedwin
Thanks for the shout out Brian :)

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hisyam
How about video interview producer? I would pay for someone to make weekly
interview videos with my clients.

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adamrights
good convo, data, metrics

