

Ask HN: How to monetize my startup - zeynalov

Some time ago I started to sell my know-how on a particular subject as a consulting service. Now I have too many clients that I can&#x27;t handle them all. I decided to build a big consulting company, so I must build a system that works, an algorithm that handles all clients.<p>1. Most clients find me online and they want a consulting from me. Most of them can&#x27;t come to the office and they want to communicate online. But online conferences have too many negative sides, most of clients are calling from other side of the globe, with dial-up speed. It&#x27;s annoying, it takes too much time.<p>2. Communication through email is better because of its clearness, but the billing process is annoying. You can&#x27;t determine how much you should charge.<p>The problem:<p>I don&#x27;t know how to build the system, that<p>- the clients find me first on google, navigate my website and learn the process. How should I design the System?<p>- the clients pay me per hour in advance; Which platform should I use?<p>- how should I consult them online? written? voice? skype meetings?<p>PS. I can code, I have killer designer team, my website has a moderate google ranking (getting better with the time). I get daily 50-70 clients that want to pay.
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saluki
Sounds like you are in demand . . . I would stay away from hourly billing.
(Google Patio11, read his articles, listen to his podcast and track down his
microconf talks they all relate to your question and contain great advice.)

Sounds like you could use a standard website and offer a subscription offering
. . . for ongoing consulting via email . . . or packages that provide a block
of your expertise via email . . . again I wouldn't offer hourly services.

If you're in demand I expect your value/knowledge is way larger than any
hourly rate would work out to.

So maybe a standard website . . . and integrate Stripe.com for
subscriptions/recurring packages (first choice) and maybe some fixed fee
packages.

I wouldn't spend too much time developing anything special beyond that . . .
unless your clients are asking for more features . . .

Another channel to sell your knowledge would be ebooks/packages of
instructions/code for example . . . maybe even videos . . . (Google Nathan
Barry, he does a lot of this well).

Good luck sounds like you're on the right track.

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zeynalov
Thank you, great advices. I regularly read both Nathan and Patrick. I love
tehm. I think I'm already ready for the launch. On thursday ( -/\+ 1 day) I'm
going to post a Show HN post. I'm excited :)

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thegrif
Congratulations for being in such high demand :-)

I don't think you're going to be able to charge an hourly rate if the bulk of
your correspondence is via email. It's going to cause more problems then it's
worth.

Airpair.com provides 24 hour access to an expert, priced based upon the
complexity of the problem (a proxy to how much work is actually required on
your part). They also calibrate the expert assignments, making sure the more
advanced professionals get the more difficult problems. This could be a
possibility for you - unless you want to continue handling all requests
yourself.

I wonder if you could use Slack as the primary platform for orchestrating the
transaction.

1\. User hits your website, becomes convinced, submits the inquiry, and
deposits money into his account. Managing a balance adds complexity, but you
always have a better chance of getting more money with one transaction versus
smaller ones.

2\. Upon payment (let's use Stripe, because that integrates with Slack) they
are issued an invitation to your Slack instance. A private channel is also
created that they will be restricted to. The private channel should correspond
to some sort of customer ID - because you will want to use the same channel
throughout the lifetime of the customer to maintain continuity,

3\. Optionally you may also create a tracking ticket using something that
integrates with Slack and Stripe. The ticket contains the stripe transaction
information, the original inquiry, key info on the customer, and hopefully
links to the customer's past interactions.

4\. The advantage of Slack is all of the built in integrations. Most of your
back and forth can be via the persistent chat - and you can have a bot
reminding the user not to expect instantaneous responses. But if you do need
to do screen sharing, video conferencing, etc...there is no leaving the
environment - and it all gets tracked.

5\. You may be able to fairly track time if Slack can measure your time in the
channel and decrement the available funds accordingly. Just make sure you're
only in the channel when you're either actively communicating or researching
on the user's behalf.

6\. Once the user's account hits a predefined threshold, issue a warning and
suggest that they replenish their account in order to continue the
conversation. Clicking the link or interacting with the bot would replenish
the account via a charge out to Stripe. Tracking ticket is updated.

7\. When the user shifts topics (after you satisfy one request and he moves
onto the next), give a bot a command that updates the ticket by closing the
last request and opening a new one. Of course we're getting a bit nuts with
this level of tracking - but I think it will be valuable to keep them all
separate as I am sure you get a ton of repeat requests. Hopefully you'd be
able to trigger an email to the user with a full transcript of the exchange.

8\. Eventually the user will be done asking questions and may likely have a
balance. Even if the balance is zero, retain the private channel. It serves as
a searchable log of the interaction and is a mechanism for the user to come
back and reengage with you.

9\. You may optionally add some public channels covering the topics you
provide advice on. This may be useful to keep your users occupied while you
answer questions as your day progresses.

\-----

It's important to note that this is only worthwhile if the exchange between
you and the customer is more discussion-oriented versus one-off answers to
specific questions. Simpler interactions would remove the value Slack adds -
and in that case I would fall back to a ticketing system you're comfortable
with that has hooks into the payment engine you're using.

:-)

~~~
zeynalov
Thank you for your great write-up

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walterbell
You used the word "annoying" twice. Pricing can be used to segment markets
into annoying and less-annoying, for local definitions of annoying :)

In consulting, the goal is always to customize first-principles creative
material for the unique needs of each client. Reusable written content is
better than verbal content, unless you can remix audio/video snippets for
customers. Over time, a growing library of content is a competitive advantage.
A subset can be free = marketing.

Based on customer questions, you could ask them to watch a 1 hour training
webinar, hand-curated from your library of N webinars, then send written
questions, then escalate to live conference. Each tier is more expensive than
the previous one.

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vonklaus
I think you should build a super simple chat client or use something like
whatsapp and integrate it into a browser. That way, a potential client can
find you and immediately engage with you about their needs. This is
frictionless. Someone can type in real time and then book them. You can use
asynchronous tools like email or a video chat like appear.in.

You should prob consult/explain for 5 minutes free and then make your rates
known. After 5 minutes have them do a quick stripe payment, and then run a
meter. Something like this is quick, frictionless and unsophisticated. You
could even put the price on the screen like a taxi meter but this could
actually be negative. Transparency works tp a point though.

~~~
zeynalov
Do you think it's a bad idea to put the packages on the website with pricing,
rather than explaining the prices and rates every client in first 5 min. free
conversation? Is it for consulting company a negative strategy?

~~~
walterbell
If the prices are appropriate for the market, e.g. customers already pay those
prices to your competitors, or have paid those prices to you in the past,
there is no harm.

Clear pricing saves everyone time. However, as soon as you post pricing, you
need to have good marketing material explaining the value of the service in
each price tier. Presumably you are repeating that sales pitch now in the
first 5 minutes - better to do it once and deliver online.

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fouademi
Design predefined packages based on your experience and charge fixed amounts
per project, and sell additional hours for a known cost too. However, I've
seen some well established consultation companies use freelancers platforms to
market their services and get paid, so it might be worth trying.

~~~
zeynalov
what do you mean by "some well established consultation companies use
freelancers platforms to market their services and get paid" ? how they use
freelancer platforms?

~~~
walterbell
This is a local services marketplace, not software, but it has good marketing.

[http://techcrunch.com/2014/08/20/service-marketplace-
thumbta...](http://techcrunch.com/2014/08/20/service-marketplace-thumbtack-
raises-100m-round-led-by-google-capital/)

[http://www.thumbtack.com/](http://www.thumbtack.com/)

