[consulting] question about selling subsites

[Greg Knaddison]

On Fri, Mar 5, 2010 at 9:13 AM, Sam Cohen <sam at samcohen.com> wrote:
> I am looking more for advice and experience on the business end of doing
> this, such as what people are charging and how they are handling support.

How about: as much as you can?

If you have something that makes your site unique or if you're the
first to offer it, charge as much as you can. If you have competitors
then the price will always trend toward the cost of running the
business and in the internet world that favors organizations that can
scale.

More specifically there are three easy steps:
1) Figure out what it will cost you to run the service and how much
profit/salary you want to make
2) Competitive analysis looking at their features, your features, and
the perceived value of your subsites compared to
Ning/GoogleGroups/Whatever
3) Then do a survey of some of the major users of the current site and
see if they are willing to pay as much as you feel is justified by
steps 1 and 2.

> The idea of taking on hundreds or new clients and providing including "free"
> support is a bit daunting.

I suggest using GetSatisfaction (or a clone). Offer to pay the best
folks in the community if they spend time in GetSatisfaction answering
questions and have them flag anything to you that's a real problem.
You'll find some out of work or "work from home parent" types spending
time in your forum who will be happy to provide support and they'll
know the community better than anyone "professional" support you could
hire anyway.

Cheers,
Greg

-- 
Greg Knaddison | 303-800-5623 | http://growingventuresolutions.com
Mastering Drupal - http://www.masteringdrupal.com