How to turn a consulting project into a product?
Hi Everyone,
I have a problem and wanted to get your thoughts on this.
I am a DevOps consultant working with clients on AWS and GCP. I help my clients do stuff like build Kubernetes clusters (automated with Terraform), CI/CD pipelines automations to do all sorts of stuff like deployment, building AMI images, data workflows, etc.
A lot of these workflows/processes are reusable and I do reuse like 80% of the same code from one client to another.
This makes me think that I should be able to sell each piece as a module that someone can use.
I think my problem is that im not really a sales/marketing guy, im a developer. If you get me in front of the decision maker and we talk through their problems, usually one or more of these common modules I have are one of their problems and I can drive them into that solution.
The harder part for me is getting people I don't know to come to my website and engage with it.
Maybe:
- I dont have good content on my website?
- I should be doing more content marketing/blogs about it?
- Be the thought leader in this space?
What do you guys think?
Is this something that could 'easily' be turned into a productized service? A one off fee or regularly monthly fee for something very specific?
Hmm...it is not totally easy. One item is similar to this product: https://goteleport.com/teleport/docs/ but with using AWS SSM (https://docs.aws.amazon.com/systems-manager/latest/userguide/session-manager-working-with-sessions-start.html).
It is basically taking a very technical AWS product and implementing it.
It could def be streamlined over time and made easier to set it up but most of my consulting im the one setting it up and i know it well so i didnt bother spending time on making it "easy".
Hey, we are developing a solution to create and manage cloud environments with ease.
We have already sold it to few start-ups. The point is that we have experience and sales and we can make a kind of partnership. Text me to discuss it.
For the product part-
For the Marketing/sales part-
You may want to take a look at Gruntwork (https://gruntwork.io/). They are doing something similar to what you're talking about.
Good idea...i am familiar with gruntwork and use their open source stuff heavily...i have never used any of their paid stuff but probably should look into that.
Hey Gar,
the standard thing to do in such a situation, would be to turn the most common modules you're advising on, into a video course, or multiple separate video modules, and then sell those on your website.
Onto your more specific question- to build traffic for your website you will have to either 1) work on a blog, and developing a proper SEO score for Google, or YouTube and build an audience there or 2) start using Facebook and Google Ads to run traffic to the modules you're selling.
This should be the bread and butter of your traffic strategy - there will be additional opportunities, like being a guest on podcasts, blogs, etc that will help, but likely won't do the job alone.
Hope that helps :)
Feel free to reach out for further questions.
That is an interesting approach. You are saying to sell a bundle that has like a training/walk through and then the code?