Ultimate Badass List of Productized Consulting Services

If you are looking to outsource specific parts of your business, you’ve come to the right place.

Productized consulting services allow you to outsource parts of your business without getting caught up in the hiring process.

I’m trying to provide you (and me) with a good overview of what is available online. If you find something missing here, please tell me: christoph@christophengelhardt.com

The User is Drunk

Ever heard that your website should be so simple that a drunk user can use it? Richard Littauer, an UX designer, offers to be that drunk user for your website – complete with video.

Website Teardowns

Let’s face it: We are woefully blind to the deficiencies of our own websites. We think we’ve got a clever headline, when in fact we have a non-descript headline. Dave Collins gives you straight talk on how visitors do see your website with a fresh pair of eyes. You can even get an SEO audit to go with your website teardown. Topped of with a sprinkle of British sarcasm.

The User is my Mom

Think a drunk UX expert is the worst challenge you can put your website through? You’re wrong. There’s one thing worse than that: Your mom. Here you can hire someone else’s Mom to torture your website.

WebmasterOnSite

Managed website hosting starting at $299/mo

Contentation

Complete management of your blog – from setup to content creation to content promotion – starting from $99 for the blog setup to $109/mo for the complete management package.

Podcast Motor

PodcastMotor offers three tiers:

  • the concierge service (editing, publication, social media, show notes, etc) for $495/mo
  • setup of your podcast (hosting, feed, cover art, etc) for $150
  • episode editing for $50/episode

I’ve personally tried the episode editing and the results were good.

CastingWords

CastingWords is a transcription service for your audio/video files. Prices start at $1 per minute of recording. They send you the transcription in HTML, MS Word and plain text and also offer different ways of integration with Dropbox, Zapier and more.

Scribie

Scribie offers the same services as CastingWords at a slightly lower price point.

PostPolished

PostPolished offers editing services for your content. Prices start at $39 for a one-time editing task or $139/mo for 1 blog.

GhostBlogWriters

Ghost writing for your blog. Prices start at $40 per post. Good quality and they come up with their own topics to write about. They also publish the post to your WordPress blog (if given access) – very easy to use

OptimizedPrime

The folks at OptimizedPrime create lead magnets for you. Lead magnets help you convert more visitors into email subscribers. Prices start at $49/mo for 1 lead magnet

WPCurve

Productized WordPress support (backups, security updates and small jobs) makes it much easier to host your own blog.

WPNexus.io

WPNexus is offering a productized service similar to WPCurve but at a lower price point

CodeMyViews WordPress Concierge

This concierge service for WordPress offers you complete peace of mind for your WordPress website. Starting at $599/mo they offer preventive maintenance, development, and marketing tasks.

WPSaaS

WPSaaS offers support as a service for your WordPress plugins so you can focus your time on developing new features. Prices start at $399/mo

ThemeValet

ThemeValet sets up your WordPress website for you – starting from $99

DrupalAid

Want a WPCurve-like service but don’t run WordPress? Well if you’re using Drupal there’s help for you: DrupalAid is productized Drupal Support – starting from $99/mo

WooGuru.net

WooGuru.net is a productized support service for WooCommerce.

SEOak

Productized SEO services for resellers. You pay them to do the SEO work for your clients. Ideal for digital marketing agencies. Starts at $125/mo

UX Reviews by GobySavvy

Have a professional test the UX of your product – starting at $325

AppAftercare

AppAftercare manages and maintains your existing apps.

OutreachSignals

OK. This whole Productized Consulting thing is getting a bit meta. 🙂

OutreachSignals is a concierge prospecting & outreach service specifically designed for B2B productized consulting services. So it’s marketing for your B2B productized consulting service – starting at $495/mo

Rocking Book Covers

A productized design service for book covers; both eBook and print.

FunnelEngine

This great productized consulting service delivers funnels Done-For-You. Starting at $999 for a popup marketing funnel this is one of the greatest additions to the list. I love it.

Draft Revise & Draft Coaching

Nick Disabato is an UX / split testing expert and offers a monthly ongoing A/B testing service. Additionally you can hire him to help you grow your freelancing business.

My Content Sherpa

Philip Morgan’s “My Content Sherpa” not only creates a content strategy for you, but also executes it.

CreativeBoris

CreativeBoris helps you generate blog post ideas – including three different headlines per post and tweets. Starts at $99/mo

Bench

Productized book-keeping service that starts at $135/mo

Kudu

Kudu is a productized AdWords account management service – starting at $399/mo

BirdLeap

BirdLeap is productized Twitter Ads management. Starting at $299/mo (+$199 setup) for ad budgets up to $1,500 monthly this service makes it super easy to run successful ad campaigns on Twitter.

DoubleYourECommerce

Kai Davis is an outreach marketer who specializes in helping eCommerce websites get more traffic to their website. Prices start at $749 for the “digital outreach plan”

Undullify

Undullify offers unlimited design jobs (small jobs taking less than 30 minutes) for $149/mo.

Kapa99.com

Unlimited graphics and small design jobs for a flat fee – starting at $399/mo.
Or you can pay $49 for one-off jobs. 
Now let me tell you: I’ve vetted those guys after Ka, their founder, contacted me. And let me tell you: They are worth every penny they charge. 
Because here’s is the email I sent Ka with the job description: 

 

And here’s the final result and it was spot on: 

 

I can only recommend the folks at Kapa99.com

Correlation

My friend Jane Portman is an amazing designer and you can hire her to give monthly creative directions to your designers.

Snap by Copyhackers

The folks over at Copyhackers offer a productized copy-writing service – either one-off or monthly recurring. A bit pricey, but they are regarded as world-class copywriters.

LittleAds

LittleAds helps you by crafting the copy for your Facebook ads ($65/mo) or even setting up and managing your Facebook ad campaigns ($495/mo)

Calibrate Rapid

Calibrate Rapid by Nathan Powell is a one-off report with actionable design improvements to increase your website’s conversion rate. Priced at $920.

AudienceOps

AudienceOps offers the creation and execution of your content marketing strategy. Starts at $950/mo

RecapMail

RecapMail keeps your existing mailing list warm and engaged. Starts at $79/mo

WebsiteRescues

This productized service helps you generate more revenue with your Shopify store. They do walkthroughs of your store and dissect the user experience of your shop.
Additionally, they also offer Shopify SEO packages starting at $894

WholeDesignStudios

This agency offers a wide range of services for Shopify: SEO, Facebook Ad Management, Conversion Rate Optimization, etc.
Rather pricey, but you’ll get a bunch of services from the same people. 

Rails as a Service

Rails as a Service provides maintenance (e.g. installing security updates) and even upgrades it from Rails 2.3 or 3.2 to Rails 4.2. Prices start at $495/mo

WorkNice

WorkNice provides a virtual workplace happiness consultant that helps you improve the culture in your company. Costs $100/mo per team member

Black Light

Conversion Optimization services for membership websites. Prices start at $750

WPTheory

WordPress website setup and launch done in just one day. Priced at $999

Reactive Ops

DevOps-as-a-Service starting at $6,000/mo.

Here comes the Airplane

OK… I’m not going to say anything about the name. If you live in the Bay Area this offer takes care of your meals. You sign up for a year and they deliver a fixed amount of meals per month to you. I just hope it’s not as bad as most airlines’ food.

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Mike Taber – Business Hacks & Epic Wins – MicroConf Europe 2014

The MicroConf Europe 2014 Hub Page has notes on all the talks and additional information.

Webseite: AuditShark.com / SingleFounder.com
Twitter: @singlefounder
Slides: here

Social Media

  • Why is a Twitter strategy important?
    • It expands your footprint
    • you make bigger waves when you publish content
  • The #1 secret to increasing your audience: Follow more people
  • Tools used:
  • Follow people using TweetAdder
    • 100-200 follows per day maximum (Maximum of 2,000 followers total)
    • Follow people following influencers in your niche
    • 7 days later: Unfollow people who don’t follow you
    • Thank people for following you
      • They will favorite it
      • They will retweet it (additional reach)
      • They will reply to you

Finance Automation

  • Success causes problems – e.g. having 3 different business entities
  • “You know, I’ve never really liked paying bills” – so I stopped doing it
    • Outsourced paying for bills
    • Work ON your business, not IN your business
  • Plan
    • Identify & document everything that needs to be handled
    • Build a process for it
  • Execute
    • Execute the process at least once to find flaws in the process
  • Review
    • Constantly review the process
    • Early iterations require more oversight
  • Give Authority
    • Empower your employees/VAs/contractors
    • Give power to change the process
  • Give Guidance
    • provide general guidelines for how the business works
    • Have a strategic operating document
    • Document the whole process thoroughly, so others can pick up
  • Give Praise
    • They are doing you a favor, thank them for it
  • Start with an MVP – Minimum Viable Process
    • e.g. put all your invoices in a post box and hand the box to your VA

Content/SEO Automation

Personal Development

  • Increase productivity: “What if you only had 4 hours to do all your work?
  • Parkinson’s law: “Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion”
  • Limiting your time for tasks, increases your productivity
  • Personal Fulfillment: “What makes you get up every day?
    • Play to your strength
    • structure your business accordingly
  • People prefer a known bad outcome to an unknown outcome
    • Step out of your comfort zone
    • Benefits of trying new things:
      • Build self-confidence
      • Boosts courage
      • Cures boredom
      • Satisfies urge to grow
      • stimulates brain
      • increases productivity

Overall Health

  • Three Pillars of Health
    • Sleep: 7-8 hours / night
    • Exercise: (150 minutes moderate OR 75 minutes vigorous) AND 2 days muscle training
    • Eating: 1600-2500 calories/day
  • If you fail at one, the others will be influenced by that –> downwards spiral
  • Specific strategies
    • Stop evening & weekend work
    • Scheduling: go to bed at specific time, schedule exercise
    • No late night snacking; try to eat healthy
  • These strategies work, because
    • they give your brain what it needs to function properly
    • they reduce stress
  • Hormonal imbalances might cause you all sorts of trouble – with no easy way out of it
  • You can’t help other people if you can’t help yourself

Questions & Answer

  • Have you done any research of value of having more Twitter followers?
    • I am driving them to my email list – that is valuable to me
    • Provide valuable content in Tweets; intersperse with promotions
  • What workflow have you for content to tweet out?
    • Take from other websites
  • What test did you go through to get diagnosed with your hormonal imbalance?
    • Simple blood test from your doctor

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Google +1 Korrelation mit Suchergebnissen

Diese Woche gab es einen extrem interessanten Artikel im Moz Blog mit dem Thema "Amazing Correlation Between Google +1s and Higher Search Rankings" in dem Cyrus aufzeigt, warum es (aus SEO-Sicht) deutlich besser ist ein +1 auf Google+ zu bekommen als z.B. ein Facebook Like oder einen ReTweet auf Twitter.

Die Ergebnisse der Ranking-Factors-Untersuchung

Vor etwa einem Monat hat Moz die Ergebnisse der jüngsten Ranking-Factors-Untersuchung bekannt gegeben.

Auffallend war damals schon, dass die Anzahl an Google +1 stärker mit der Reihenfolge in den Suchergebnissen (SERP für Search Engine Results Page) korreliert als jede andere (nicht-abgeleitete) Metrik.

Korrelation ist nicht Kausation aber es ist schon sehr auffällig, wenn die Korrelation höher ist als z.B. die Anzahl verschiedener Webseiten, die auf den Content verlinken.

Die Frage ist also: "Beeinflussen Google +1 direkt die Suchergebnisse?"

Warum Google +1 anders ist als andere soziale Signale

Im Gegensatz zu Facebook Likes und Twitter Mentions hat ein Google +1 zwei entscheidende Vorteile:

  1. Es wird fast sofort von Google in die Suchergebnisse aufgenommen. Das ist einer der Gründe, warum Google sein eigenes soziales Netzwerk hat: Dadurch hat die Suchmaschine sofort direkten Zugriff auf Veröffentlichungen in einem sozialen Netzwerk und wird nicht abgeschirmt (wie z.B. bei Facebook)
  2. Links in Google+ haben einen positiven SEO-Einfluss. Im Gegensatz zu Links auf Twitter (die allesamt nofollow sind) geben Links in Google+ den Link Juice weiter.

Fazit

Ich würde auf jeden Fall empfehlen den Artikel von Cyrus komplett zu lesen. Eines ist aber ziemlich sicher: Google +1 lohnen sich für den Inhaber einer Webseite mehr als Twitter Mentions oder Facebook Likes.

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