Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?
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@BRRABill said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
@scottalanmiller said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
@guyinpv said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
It is correct, we don't know each other, you don't really "know" the consultant you just hired. So do you ask them before any work is done, "if you are on commissions or use affiliates, I can't work with you?"
It's good to ask, but it is required that they tell whether someone asks or not in a situation where it applies.
For example, what if I resold Netgear equipment. I do consulting and I recommend Dell equipment. I need not disclose that I had a bias away from Dell. I probably should, but I don't have to. But if I consult and recommend Netgear, I must disclose that I'm getting paid to make that recommendation. I can explain why I'm not overly biased by that, but I must tell them, every time.
Disclaimer: I do NOT sell Netgear. It's an example.
But, a consultant, you'd expect to be looking at the wide range of everything.
A VAR (that I trust), I'd expect to have a great knowledge of things they support for whatever reason (probably money) and always recommend those things.
Sure, which is why you never go to a VAR for advice, only for final oversight of configurations, prices, logistics, etc.
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@guyinpv said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
You have no guarantee you'll ever see that affiliate fee come pay day, so how much is it really affecting your consulting?
Some... and that is all that matters.
In reality, customers use those links or whatever almost always, even if you don't know which customer is the one that will make you the money, you know that X percentage will. So the money flow is there.
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@guyinpv said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
Wouldn't that be a VAR?
Correct and correct. People who are compensated through sales are salespeople. Whether they make sales by buying you a drink, showing some cleavage, knowing their product, having a low price, being in the right place at the right time or adding in some incentivized advice... they are sales people.
The assumption here is that the commission is their SOLE income, commissioned sales is not the sole income of someone who occasionally offers affiliate links. The pressure to upsell/oversell push the highest priced stuff only makes sense when the commission if the main source of income.
No, you keep saying this and we keep correcting it. The assumption is that it is some of their income. No one but you is assuming anything more than that.
No one cares about "all" the money, we care about "any" of the money.
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@guyinpv said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
@scottalanmiller said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
@guyinpv said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
But I don't see myself as the "reseller" part. I don't resell, I just throw out a link and tell them this is my partner link, if you want to give an extra tip. No pressure.
This is how I read this....
I don't see myself as a reseller. I just resell.
Um... what?
I read the term "resell" as that I buy the product myself and resell it to the customer, perhaps with markup. Or that I use white-label products and rebrand it, resell, with markup.
I don't see how an affiliate link is "reselling".
It just is.
Reselling is used to mean: "Any compensation for moving a product."
I know that it isn't strict reselling and is buying and then selling again, but affiliates is the primary form of reselling in the IT industry. It's far from all, but it's gotta be over 50%. Anytime anyone in IT uses the term reseller or VAR, what you call affiliate is what they mean to include, always. Everyone uses it this way. Because that's how the majority of official partner "resellers" are compensated. It's just a means of handling the reseller system.
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@guyinpv said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
I don't see any wiggle room for "consulting + implementing" as this breaks the absolute unbias rule, thus it's not consulting, just VAR and biased opinions. Therefore, either someone is consulting, or they are a VAR, with no grey areas.
Not a VAR since there is no reselling involved.
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@guyinpv said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
What option is there for them to be respectable, quality, service providers?
Just don't do the reselling portion
Like you said, it's trivial money, no skin off your back. So just skip it, problem solved.If you want to go the complex route, disclose everything. But you are getting into big company problems, not one man shop problems. You are trying to wear a lot of hats.
NTG does this by being bigger, having resources, lots of contacts and an array of VARs and vendors with which we have strong relationship and influence, but which we do not sell, allows us to broker relationships, leverage influence, keep an eye on interfaces and provide all of the value of going to a one stop shop, while not having the conflict of interest that comes from being the company doing the sales.
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@scottalanmiller said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
@Breffni-Potter said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
What further discussion is there to this?
This was at 400 posts at 5pm when I left the office, it's now 11pm and what has been achieved? Has any progress been made?
No idea, I'm not up to post 400 yet.
531 posts on a thread...most of it about a topic which is going round and round in circles
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@Breffni-Potter said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
@scottalanmiller said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
@Breffni-Potter said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
What further discussion is there to this?
This was at 400 posts at 5pm when I left the office, it's now 11pm and what has been achieved? Has any progress been made?
No idea, I'm not up to post 400 yet.
531 posts on a thread...most of it about a topic which is going round and round in circles
SLowly catching up. MOst things go in circles for a bit until we figure out where people are mis communicating. Round and round is a solution pattern.
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@scottalanmiller said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
@BRRABill said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
So if a 3 person non-profit church comes in and wants a $5K server. No questions asked you just sell it to them? Not me. Because I know they do not know what they need. They know the term server, but have no idea what it means, and what it is for. And how for 1/100th or less of the cost they can have a much better solution.
If they didn't come to you for advice and you refuse to sell them what they need, that's kinda weird, right? Hi, we want to buy something from your "store". But you say "sorry, I don't agree with your desires, you can only buy what I think is right for you."
But they DO come for advice. That is what I am saying. Am I not getting that across properly?
They don't come asking specifically for a server. The think they might need one, and what do I think?
I still cannot get past you don't question what your customers really need. And yes, I do know what they need.
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@scottalanmiller said
This is totally wrong. If you go into a shoe store and say you want a shoe it's not unethical for them to sell it to you. It's in no way, ever, the job of a salesman to care if something is good or bad for you, or the "right fit." They have an ethical responsibility to sell, there is zero ethical responsibility to you. Zero. In fact, refusing to sell to you based on their own opinions is very questionable certainly to their employer but ultimately to you as well.
I buy my shoes from a specialized shoe store. (Well, it's a running store.) I walk in, and we go over all the things about my feet. And he recommends a particular shoe. And I've been going back because he sells me the best shoes I've ever been sold for my feet.
Now, I did NOT go in and say "SELL ME SHOE ABC". I went in and said "hey I have these issues with my feet, what do you recommend?"
And I went to him because lots of people recommended him because they had the same experiences.
And if he just sells me some random shoe, he knows I'll be back complaining about it, so why shouldn't he try to figure out what I need.
This happens all the time. In more than just shoe stores.
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@scottalanmiller said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
@guyinpv said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
I can't help but think in the real world case that I AM doing some level of consulting, AND some level of VARing. They need me to research and discover their needs and help them navigate options, but at the same time I already know they are going to end up buying something like a NAS one way or the other.
This statement is a great example of how the system turns you into a VAR. How does "going to buy a NAS" ever come up as a common, expected result? And how does any single NAS vendor come up as the single, almost always the answer? You have two layers of "this isn't how consulting would work" at least here. Because if doing real consulting... NAS would be not uncommon, but anything but expected. And that a single NAS vendor would be the right answer would also not be very common. Maybe one is 50% of the time, maybe. But not even that, in my experience.
Only a VAR thinks in terms of "the answer is nearly always the same." The answer only looks that way when you approach it from a VAR perspective. A consultant wouldn't see the world in cookie cutters. It's the affiliate programs that create the illusion of one size fits all. And it is the VAR emotions that make it seem reasonable to think that the consulting is a farce and that the same basic answer always results.
If you approach this as a consultant without the sales angle, you quickly see those things evaporate. There is no means of having one main solution.
I don't buy this. Is O365 "uncommon" in their market space? Is Google Docs an uncommon solution? Are cloud backups and antivirus solutions uncommon when they want central management?
Is AWS the uncommon choice for building a cluster of app servers? Is Azure uncommon when they want offsite management of AD?Of course many solutions can be thought of as "common". Is Dell not common when a server is needed? In what situations would Dell not even be among the choices for a server purchase?
If you need free virtualization, is Xen or Hyper-V uncommon?
Why must one be a VAR before they can have some favorite tools in the toolbox? Or pull out some "common" options when a particular need comes up?
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@scottalanmiller said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
But no one is defining it that way. Maybe in your mind that is what VAR means, but not to anyone else. VAR means you do sales and add services.
That seems like a perfectly reasonable conclusion. The problem is now that VAR is established, many many negative words were introduced to describe them.
Their ONLY job is "selling as much as possible."
They are "beholden" to the vendors.
The vendors are their "masters."
Their opinions are wholly "biased", if not totally "corrupted."
They cannot ethically/morally/objectively do any "consulting" when possible reselling is on the table.I'm fine being called a generalist "services" provider, a VAR who provides services, break/fix, comes up with solutions and has some recommended affiliate/partner products in my toolbox should they be needed.
What I reject is being told I am essentially as good as a pushy vacuum salesmen, whose only job is selling for the man and so I can't be trusted for the best advice. Or that I've become a car lot and my whole job is selling the most expensive car. -
@scottalanmiller said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
Just don't do the reselling portion Like you said, it's trivial money, no skin off your back. So just skip it, problem solved.
Well yes, trivial. Like maybe the tune of $400 in the last few years? Thus I've only thought of it as bonus money, pocket money, lunch money, coffee money. Not something that changes my entire business model, focus, and how I go about working for people.
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@guyinpv said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
I can't respond any more, I've got too much to do today! Thanks for all the perspectives, don't think I've ignored them, it definitely changes how I'm going to structure my offerings and deal with potential partnerships/reseller accounts.
I may think of myself as a saint, but if you're telling me that the general IT industry is saturated with such "corruption", I will have to be very careful indeed not to fall in the trap.I'm 100 posts behind, lol. Even if you were ignoring the posts, I don't think I'd know for another day.
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@guyinpv said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
Really gentlemen, we should have reached "agree to disagree" about 100 posts ago! LOL But I can't get onboard will illogic, false dichotomies, false motives, and the low opinions of mankind as expressed. Many of those thoughts are just opinions, not facts.
The issues are not those, though. So if you disagree, it's disagreeing with something other than what we are saying.
The facts are that adding in a payment for being a seller's agent makes an inappropriate conflict of interest that must be disclosed. No amount of the stuff you mention is a factor. It's simply inappropriate. Think it doesn't affect you, that's fine, but that doesn't apply. It is what it is.
As far as the low opinion of mankind, you need to see the stuff that VARs do under the guise of consultants in the real world. It's not 50% of the time, its 99.9% of the time that it is insanely, blatantly obvious that the client was scammed. And in a way that only makes sense if there was a sales bias added in because it is the only way that the vendor would benefit from running the scam (and most admit when caught that they do this.) It's not a low opinion of humanity, it's basic observation of the market.
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@guyinpv said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
@scottalanmiller said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
Just don't do the reselling portion Like you said, it's trivial money, no skin off your back. So just skip it, problem solved.
Well yes, trivial. Like maybe the tune of $400 in the last few years? Thus I've only thought of it as bonus money, pocket money, lunch money, coffee money. Not something that changes my entire business model, focus, and how I go about working for people.
Honestly, for that, I wouldn't bother to be thrown into this pit.
Not that $400 is nothing, but to open this kind of can of worms...
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@guyinpv said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
I just don't see it as a paradox at all. The client has all priority. They will decide if my recommendations are good. They will decide if we proceed. They will decide if they want me to do the work. They will decide which option to go with. They will decide if it's all in budget. They will decide to use any affiliate links for purchases, should I provide any or have any to begin with. There is no "relationship" to an affiliate that must be maintained, no quotas, no contracts, no obligations. That is only bonus money IF the product is selected, and IF the client buys "through me".
Priority isn't enough, though. Sure, as long as they pay more, they get more priority. But you have a blend from two masters. The customer might pay $10, but the vendor pays another $5 if what the customer gets happens to be what the vendor wants. None of the things that you mention here are factors. The payment from the vendor is non-zero. That the customer doesn't always chose them... not a factor. The question is do they ever choose them.
You are always adding in absolutes to make it sound one way and always ignore that we say it can't be absolutes. You demand that it isn't "always" but that hides that we are talking about "ever". You keep not addressing that. Every time you say "always" it seems like you are acknowledging and avoiding the issue.
The issues with the above are that the customer shouldn't be primary, the should be sole. The vendor influence need not be always, just ever.
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@guyinpv said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
It's no more a paradox than suggesting, as a father, that having 2 kids and a wife is a paradox, cause how can I possibly love one equally to the other? Or work for the good of one without also hurting the other? How can I be a good husband without becoming a bad father? Or be a good father without becoming a bad husband! Oh the humanity!
But you don't take payment from one of them with the promise of representing them against the interests of the others, you don't make a contractual bond to be a "team" against the others. Your kids are not out to get each other and you are not the representative of one, not the other, in that situation. This is a nonsensical comparison to the situation, like the sidewalk one. I feel like you are not understanding your relationship and obligations and ethical requirements of being a consultant - of being hired to be the buyer's agent. Not because of the affiliate thing, but because of your analogies. The way that your analogies work, I feel like you aren't sensing what being a consultant means.
If you told this analogy to your customer, that just hired you to be their representative, to be bonded to them and be on their team they would lose their sh1t. Because it suggests that you feel that the customer is like your kid (or wife) and that the vendor that you are affiliated with is like your wife (or kid.) Your analogy paints a picture of being beholden, involved with and biased towards the vendor far, far beyond the degree that we were worried about here. I'm not saying that you would be, I'm saying that in your mind the analogies that you create suggest far more problems than we are suggesting from the monetary bias problem.
It's Freudian, right? Why does your mind analogue the vendor to such a tight relationship?
If making this comparison in an analogy like this, I would have made it more like this....
The client is your child (although never tell clients that you think of them like children) and you are on a team, looking out for each other, and the vendor is another kid from across town that your kid wants to buy a trading card from. You don't want to hurt or mistreat the other kid or not treat them fairly, but you aren't there to help them out, either. You are there to make sure that your kid doesn't get jumped by bullies, lost on the way, get his money stolen, not get the trading card he was promised, not get the price he was told it would be, that the kid from across town is really another kid and not some Internet stalker, etc. Your kid looks for you to be guidance and protection against the evils and dangers in the world. That's your relationship as a consultant.
But in your analogy, the vendor is another person that you care about and want to please equally with your customer. And that analogy explains why the affiliate program is bad, it elevated, in your analogy at least, your vendor relationship up to the same as that as your customer. So this analogy from you, I feel, is the best possible way to see why the program doesn't work.
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@guyinpv said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
A car salesman cannot take all customers to the cheapest car and then offer it at cost. They would be out of work in a couple days. But doing good work for clients takes place with or without affiliates. The objective is still doing good work, not selling the highest priced car.
But they can if they double dip and get paid to make the connection. Double dipping creates a lot of opportunities for making money depending on the situation. Customer not paying well... sell them something that isn't best for them but pays you well. Customer paying really well but only if they don't spend much on the solution... sell them something with no overhead.
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@scottalanmiller said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
The facts are that adding in a payment for being a seller's agent makes an inappropriate conflict of interest that must be disclosed.
I think of it more like a tip or bonus.
A barista who puts out a tip jar doesn't become a slave of the coffee shop just because sometimes during their work, some change is dropped in.
