By Leo Babauta
Another great way to make money off your blog, apart from freelancing, is as a consultant. You probably won’t make a huge amount of money with either of these types of businesses, at least until you have a large audience, but they can be a decent side income.
Remember: income streams … the way to make money on your blog is through a number of income streams. Advertising, affiliate programs, selling your own digital products … these are all great ways to bring in income. And consulting can be a great income stream as well.
What’s the difference between freelancing and consulting? In many cases, the two are either the same thing or they overlap quite a bit — it’s hard to tell the two apart sometimes. But in my mind, a freelancer produces something for a fee (an article or blog post, photos, graphics, a design, etc.), while a consultant will offer expertise for a fee. Consultants tend to help a business or group or person improve something, or come up with a plan to do something, or does work on a certain project.
Freelancers also tend to work from their own offices or homes with their own tools, doing work independently, while consultants might go into a place of business and do work with that business, often with less control over schedule and tasks. However, this is all up for negotiation and can vary greatly from one job or industry to another. Again, the two terms are sometimes used interchangeably, so there is probably no universally accepted difference.
Consulting Ideas
Some examples of what different consultants might do:
- Management consulting
- IT design, upgrading, management, etc.
- Blogging advice
- SEO techniques
- Writing coaching
- Head-hunting
- Marketing
- Tax strategies
- Landscaping
- Human resources improvements
- Accounting
- Advertising
- Auditing
- Personal development
- Workplace safety
There are many more types of consulting, obviously — this is just to give you an idea of the broad array of types of consulting businesses that are out there.
What It Takes
Basically, you need to know how to do something well. If you don’t immediately know what you can do well, give it some thought — what have you spent years doing, either professionally or personally? Don’t just think in terms of what your job has been, but what work you’ve actually been doing. You might have been in tech support but mostly building a company website, or in PR but creating a lot of kick-ass brochures. Or maybe you were a secretary but organized a lot of events.
Once you’ve got an idea of what you can do, think of who needs this skill or expertise. Who uses this skill but needs improvement? Often it’s large businesses, but it could be non-profit organizations, small businesses, individual entrepreneurs, or just regular people. Now where are these people? What do they read? Where can you reach them? What are they interested in? Do as much research here as you can.
Experience and expertise is the starting point. But to have a successful consulting business, you need a way to reach people. This is where the blog comes in — it can be the best advertisement for a consulting business possible. Build a blog around great content related to what you really know, and you’re showing what an expert you are — building your authority. Help others to do what you know, and you’ll build an audience. Once you have the audience, you have the consulting business.
How to Set Up Shop
When I dropped most of my ads on Zen Habits and went down to one single ad, I decided to supplement my ad income with consulting. So I put up a link in my sidebar, did a post announcing my new consulting business, and had a “Hire Leo” page where people could find out about what I was offering, what my rate was, and how to hire me.
It was that simple. I got a number of people interested in consulting: for blogging, for business strategy, and personal development. In fact, I had to turn away business.
However, it was successful simply because I already had an audience, which is why on Day 1 of this bootcamp, we talked about the importance of building the foundation first — growing your audience. As you do this, you can establish your authority/credibility, and by helping people you’ll both show how much you know and you will grow your audience.
It’s also a good idea to establish some things in the beginning of any consulting gig:
- What exactly the job will entail.
- What you’ll charge, including expenses.
- A contract for your services.
- When you’ll get paid — up front, or half up front and half afterward, or in increments.
- What level of involvement you’ll have in a project, and how closely you’ll work with the company hiring you.
- Deadlines and exactly what needs to be delivered.
- A very good idea of what your client is looking for — what direction they want you to move in.
There are other things you should establish, but that’s a good start.
Resources
There’s a lot more to learn about consulting businesses, of course — this is just to get you started.
Here are a couple of other good articles for further reading:
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