Article 6

Seniors’ Quick Guide to Online Consulting Success

Did you know that people are willing to pay you top dollar for your knowledge? I know it seems so hard to believe but the online consulting industry is worth billions of dollars and continues to grow year after year. The truth is businesses start all over the world and they’re looking for expert knowledge. The problem is a lot of these materials cannot be found online for a variety of reasons. 

Also people are looking for actual consultants that they can reach out to and talk to on a one to one basis. They feel that can easily pick the brain of somebody that they’re talking to so that the information they get is neatly tailored to whatever problems they may have. In other words, it’s not much different from hiring somebody to visit your worksite so they can guide you through certain issues that you are struggling with. 

The only difference here is that you’re doing it through Skype, Google hangouts and some sort of online platform like Whatsapp. On the other end of the equation, senior citizens can make good money offering consulting services. These companies can come from Western Europe, Canada, United States, Australia and New Zealand and all points in-between.

The secret to making money with online consulting boils down to 2 key factors:

Factor #1

Skills Specialization

I’m sorry to be the one to break this to you but if your skill is possessed by most people in this planet, you probably are not going to make much money as an online consultant. Seriously, if your skill is to look stuff up on Google, anybody can do that. If your skill is to write in English, I’m sorry to report but there are many places in the world like the Philippines, Nigeria, Kenya, Bangladesh, India, where there are millions of people, literally millions of people who speak English as their second language. 

Accordingly, there is a race to the bottom as far as those skill sets are concerned. If you want to succeed in the world of online consulting, you have to offer really specialized skill sets. I’m talking about specialized programming, legal knowledge, specialized consulting, backed up by dozen of years of experience, business law, specialized type of research or medical knowledge. 

Whatever the case maybe, the more specialized your body of knowledge is, the more dollars its worth. It really all boils down to the iron law of economics. It’s all about supply and demand – the higher the supply, the lower the demand, the lower the price. On the other hand if you flip the script and the supply is very tight and limited but the demand is crazy, then the price goes up astronomically. That’s never going to change nor is it going to go away. So do yourself a big favor, if you want to get into the lucrative world of online consulting, pick the right skill set. 

The good news is the internet has many resources where you can pick up the skill set. If you want to learn how to code, you can go to Code Academy. If you want to learn how to do a certain type of consulting, you can go to udemy.com.

Factor #2

Branding

I don’t know about you, but the first time I used legal services, I was referred to a lawyer by a friend of mine. However, it turns out that the guy didn’t really know what he was doing. So I was fairly frustrated with the legal services and I swore off lawyers for a long time. 
Well, finally, I went to a seminar and I saw that there were these lawyers who kept talking about this attorney, who basically was revolutionizing a particular segment of the legal industry. This person had a tremendous reputation. So when I faced some legal issues of my own I knew who to talk to and guess what? He delivered. In fact, he over-delivered. 

The reason why I raised this story with you is because it highlights the power of branding. Reputations don’t come out of nowhere. People will only develop a reputation in a particular industry because they know what they’re doing. They are able to do the right things at the right time with the right people to produce the right outcome. That’s tremendous amount of competence and we’re not just talking about being able to do the job but they are able to do the job consistently. 

And this is why, if you want to earn top dollar as an online consultant, you have to develop that kind of reputation. The good news is it’s actually easier than you can realize by simply writing a lot of articles, getting invited to speak at symposiums, conventions and networking event. You can make your personal consulting brands stand out. 

Make no mistake, even if you are only able to distinguish your brand a little bit from the competition that can mean a lot. It can justify charging $200 per hour instead of being stuck with the industry standard of $25 per hour or less. 

To get the inside scheme on how to succeed in the often competitive world of online consulting services, click here. You will download the only guide senior citizens need to market their online business so they can earn substantially from the internet.
