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.

I suspect that her situation is shared by many thousands of others.

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?

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.

It seems like there should be an alternative for small business owners that beats hiring their neighbour's 14 year old son.

[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.

[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

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[TWAndrews]

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

[Sundog]

As an info product or software?

[Hisoka]

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