Relative Value

No, this is not about the comparative value of your family.

This morning I was thinking about the worth of things. I receive lots of e-mails and messages trying to convince me to purchase services from people or companies. Some are generic, and I would categorize those as spam, even if they are in my “Focused” folder. I can’t remember a time that I received a sales e-mail or message that was broadcast generically to lots of people that I was interested in.

Sometimes I am approached with more personalized messages where someone knows something about what I do and thinks their service might be useful. In most cases they are not something I am looking for. Occasionally I receives solicitations to provide a service that I can perform myself.

If this is the case, I have to evaluate if 1. I actually need the service right now, and 2. Is it worth what they are asking. My time is fairly valuable since I bill my customers either hourly or by the job, so outsourcing a task might make sense if I can bill it out and make a profit.

Unfortunately most of the approaches that are less expensive are from somewhere in Asia or Africa, and if the job is not done to my satisfaction I have no legal recourse. The solicitations from the US for a technical task are often asking for a rate (rather than the whole job) where I can’t make a profit. So for jobs in my field I have not subcontracted anyone for many years. I do NOT need design and programming help.

Marketing is a different story. I have a very good resource for my website technical services, so I pay for that. I get solicitations for tasks that this resource doesn’t perform, most of the time related to SEO, content creation or the like. There are so many of these that I consider them spam also.

Creating an advertisement does take some time, but I can generally do it myself.

Where I really do need help, so far no one has sent me an ad or message, even though I know these companies or people exist. I need someone to create ads per my content, but I need to post regularly to my channels and help build a funnel. I have the pieces in place, but no time to keep up with it. It requires at least one e-mail per week to my list, maintenance of a MailChimp account, and regular posting of content on this blog, Linked In and Facebook. Typical funnel-building stuff. They need to be in the US for the reasons I have outlined, and ideally local so I could meet in person at least once. I don’t mind if they outsource, as long as I can hold them accountable.

I am hoping to find a company that would do a joint venture. I have a platform and tons of content along with proof of viability, a pretty good knowledge of the tasks required, but no time to do it. For that matter, no interest. Marketing is not my thing. But so far companies just want to redo my website, do SEO or write content articles.

To me this has a lot of relative value.