Productized service businesses are all the rage these days. They involve packing up a service traditionally sold on a freelance or hourly basis, and instead selling it at a fixed price or on a monthly retainer contract.
Examples include Dan Norris’ WP Curve, which offers unlimited WordPress support for $79 a month, or Russ Perry’s Design Pickle, which offers unlimited graphic design tasks for $370 a month.
(Or Gabe Arnold’s Copywriter Today, which offers unlimited article writing for your website for a flat monthly fee.)
These services are popping up in a ton of different niches, and for good reason. They have low startup costs, low overhead, and a simple to understand proposition for customers.
In this post, I want to go over three productized service business ideas you can start today — even if you have no prior experience.
You can combine these ideas with what I’ll call “The Bryan Harris method” of outreach explained in this episode to land your first clients.
Note: If any of these resonate with you, you can use my step-by-step case study guide on the fastest, cheapest way to make a great looking website for your new productized service business.
Ready?
1. Pinterest Manager
Pinterest has been a fantastic source of incremental traffic for Side Hustle Nation in the last 12 months, and I believe there’s a repeatable process to follow that many blogs and websites could benefit from.
The problem is, it takes some time, energy, and hustle to get it set up.
That’s where you come in.
In this podcast, Rosemarie shares step-by-step how to start driving qualified traffic from Pinterest. A couple months later, after following her instructions, I was seeing real results.
Skills Needed
- Ability to follow directions.
- Ability to create pin-friendly images (though this could be outsourced to a designer).
Pricing Opportunity
Charge a one-time set-up fee to create or clean up your Pinterest account, create your “Best of” board, and create the images to populate it. Include finding group boards to join and set up automated group board pinning with a tool like Board Booster.
You could even charge an ongoing monthly maintenance fee that would include optimizing your pinning schedule and creating new images as the client produces new content.
2. SSL Migration Service
Major web browsers like Chrome are putting an increased emphasis on security, and within the next few years, I believe https will be the standard (over http).
It’s already an SEO ranking factor and can be a trust factor for visitors to your site as well.
The problem is, for many amateur webmasters, making the transition isn’t as simple as flipping a switch. In fact, when I attempted to migrate Side Hustle Nation earlier this year I was met with all sorts of errors that I had to restore an old version of the site and vowed it would be a project to tackle another time.
That’s where you come in.
The good news is there are a number of tutorials online and on YouTube on how to get this done:
- Secure your site with HTTPS (Google)
- Should you switch your site to HTTPS? Here’s why you should or shouldn’t (Quicksprout)
- Moving your website to https (Yoast)
Study them, practice, and sell the migration service to website owners.
Skills Needed
- Ability to follow directions.
- Some experience with websites would be a plus. Or find an awesome tech pro to be the behind-the-scenes guy or gal.
Pricing Opportunity
Charge a one-time migration fee, probably based on the complexity and size of the site. Take a back up, make sure everything works once it’s done, and include a “no bugs” warranty where you fix any problems discovered in the next 30 days.
3. Content Audit Service
I’ve been seeing some strong improvements in Google traffic ever since my content audit experiment, which involved (gulp) deleting several hundred blog posts.
Again, the problem is it was a time-consuming process.
That’s where you come in.
The target customer for this is an individual or company that’s been blogging for at least 3 years. They would stand to benefit from a little digital spring cleaning, but probably don’t have the time or interest in doing it themselves.
And the good news is if they’re still blogging after 3 years, they’re probably making money and could afford this service.
Skills Needed
- Ability to follow directions. I explain my process in this post, but there are several other resources online as well, including this one from Moz and this one from SEMrush.
Pricing Opportunity
This is probably best sold as a one-off service as well, but I can see opportunity for quarterly maintenance “tune-ups” or similar upsells. Pricing will be based on the size of the site (number of posts) and the traffic.
What I mean by that is if your work can produce a 65% lift for a 1,000,000 pageview site, that’s worth quite a bit more than a 65% lift on a 100,000 pageview site.
Bonus Idea: The Blog-to-Video Service
Convert popular blog posts to really well done videos. This one’s not easy, but could be worthwhile for the right clients and could be sold on a monthly retainer. “We’ll produce one killer new video for you each month.”
This is a pretty weak example, but I made this video (without audio) in PowerPoint because I wanted a video post with captions to share on Facebook.
Your Turn
Note: If any of these resonate with you, you can use my step-by-step case study guide on the fastest, cheapest way to make a great looking website for your new productized service business.
What do you think of these productized service ideas? Any others you have in mind? Any of these that you’d pay for?
Yes, I’m probably going to get some pitches after this :)
I love this article, Nick! My main focus in 2017 (where’s 2016 gone?!), besides growing Escaping to Freedom into a respectable blog, is going to lie on creating a side hustle where I offer a variety of services related to blogging and content marketing. Offering them on a retainer would be so much better to keep a steady cashflow, so I’ll see what clients prefer.
The blog-to-video idea is a revelation!
I love that you refer to the content audit as “spring cleaning!” I speak from experience about the power of content auditing–it’s one of the services we offer! Depending on the amount of content a blogger produces, quarterly might just be appropriate.
I love the productized services model. It allows you to quickly discover what a niche is really about, get almost instant feedback on your value proposition, and be cashflow positive from Day 1. We’ve done this at PodcastMotor for the last 2 years now, and it’s been a really great experience to grow my previous Side Hustle into what is now a pretty significant business. Highly recommend this course for anyone looking to start something quickly and without a lot of upfront costs.
Love it Craig!
Thanks for these Nick!
The video idea jumped out for me as I am currently working on something similar to this as a new service from Mr Explainer!
Lee
Nice! I had you in mind when writing that one — keep me posted on it!
Thanks Nick! Will do!
Hey Nick!
I run a content creation company virtually. The blog to video is a great idea! Would that help in driving more engagement?
FB definitely seems to be in love with video right now, but it’s definitely one that would be harder to track your ROI on.
Hi Nick,
Love your 3 productized service ideas, Nick….they can definitely be used as a springboard for other related ideas as well! :)
Regarding your 1st idea about being a Pinterest Manager, a similar idea can be used for another extremely huge and popular social network as well – Instagram! :)
As 1 of my side-hustles happen to be in the social media space, I’m seriously thinking about taking both of these ideas at the same time, i.e. becoming a Pinterest/Instagram Setup Manager! :)
Hi Nick,
An instructive post. People to really know who they want to reach and why or else, they’ll have no way to know what they’re trying to achieve. People need to hear this and have it drilled in their brains..
Thanks for sharing this great article.
Hello Nick,
Nice post with a lot of nuggets to take with us. We do think https: will be the norm too soon. Some great freelance ideas for anyone that wants to side hustle!
Great post Nick,
I offer my services as an Instagram manager (niche). I have been working with supplement companies in reaching out to their customers and growing their account like a badass. I market my service through Instagram. Easy peasy japanesy!
Keep inspiring.
Nick,
Just came across the article (and your website) and really enjoy it so far. I love the idea of the content audit niche’! I actually offer User Experience reviews and audits at gobysavvy.com, and would love to partner with other types or productized service companies.
It’d be great to see examples of various niche’s working together to really help grow a client. For example, we work with an SEO audit, and Competitor Analysis company to provide more services.
Anyways, excited to read more of your thoughts.
Hi Nick,
Really nice post & great business ideas!
I learned I had no choice but to switch to https:// after I discovered my SEO was taking a hit. I would write quality long form content, publish, and sometime SEO wold improve. Then there was days I wrote content and published it, and my SEO wold go bad for no reason. After researching and finding out it had to with SSL, I had to play my cards nice and get that extra layer of protection. As i saw before my very eyes that the SSL certificate had helped significantly improve SEO, I was mentally jumping like a kid in a Brooklyn candy store for joy because things finally turned around. Now I work almost around the clock and even from my smartphone most of the time to create content because I really see the positive difference of what the SSL certificate does for domains. That’s the pro. The only con to having an SSL certificate is having to pay the additional annual fee alongside your annual domain fee. But I must say it’s money well spent. :-)
I learned the hard way about (https) when I wasn;t secured. My SEO took a serious hit. With the upgrade in https:// and more content, I’m seeing great results with the new mindset and approach to internet marketing. I’m going to also look into podcasting momentarily. This way, I connect on a deeper level with fellow bloggers such as yourself and my target reading audience.
As i saw before my very eyes that the SSL certificate had helped significantly improve SEO, I was mentally jumping like a kid in a Brooklyn candy store for joy because things finally turned around. Now I work almost around the clock and even from my smartphone most of the time to create content because I really see the positive difference of what the SSL certificate does for domains. That’s the pro. The only con to having an SSL certificate is having to pay the additional annual fee alongside your annual domain fee. But I must say it’s money well spent. :-)