Poll: Freelance Availability for Retainers

[marcusquinn]

Hey everyone,

Cloudron has been truly inspiring, and I want to everyone help more for all that everyone involved has been helping me with app packaging and discussion.

I've been in the digital business forever (25+ years) and have a pretty good network of contacts, all needing something, and often something we can solve with the right app(s) and setup(s).

Can I get a show of hands for who is interested in client referrals for app setup, hosting and maintenance services based on Cloudron and the specialist things you can do with them?

Developers, designers, writers, admins, consultants, that sort of thing.

I'm thinking to focus on clients that are willing to pay retainers, whether just for hosting & maintenance or regular consultancy time.

This way we can all use our good experience here and networks to make referrals based on availability and speciality.

I'll also be referring as many people as I can to Cloudron itself. Just don't ever sell-out, you're already worth too much independent, and I want to do all I can to make that more

[yusf]

I like this initiative!

I’m focused on design and ops, but I’m low on availability currently.

[thetomester13]

Great conversation!

I'm definitely interested and have some availability at the moment. I can definitely do the basics when it comes to the setup of Cloudron/domains/hosting/apps. I also have some experience packaging apps. I'm a software engineer by day and tinkerer by night and am open to hearing what's available.

[micmc]

Yeah, I too love this initiative very much.

And I agree cloudron has been a pretty inspiring project for me too and especially because of the two guys who we know upfront running it they're just amazingly incredible, it's never seen for me in career and it's been long enough, I wonder if they ever sleep loll but I know a bit of what is passion for information technology.

I too been in digital business for 30+y and before that in marketing intensively at many levels. Then I mixed everything, marketing and technology, with the event of the Internet taking the world by storm during the last 25 years, to practically become expert tactician in marketing technology. And for so, I tailor custom solutions for entrepreneurs, especially to help transforming, migrating, and integrating brick-and-mortars to digital business and there are still A LOT.

I was so passionated, the beginnings of this Internet was a very exciting moment for those involved plentily. We have seen so many opportunities exploding everywhere, that I decided that I wanted to learn everything I can about this (new) emerging technology that was about to network the world as I already believed so at the time.

And so I did, on a daily pace, I was already getting in full time from the beginning of 1998 and been doing a lot of research and reading and testing and developped and learned all the needed skills to do absolutely whatever I wanted to do online, for me or anyone else because I was so passionate I didn't have enough projects for myself to fullfil my needs to put all the knowledge up to work lol

For example, I wanted to host websites right from the beginning but I did not have a clue yet of how to do this, nor there was any cpanel or anything else in the like to make it as easy as possible, let alone technologies anywhere near the power of cloudron. Some scipting langages we use today did not even existed yet. So, I'd to become a sysops and started already to learn to install and manage Linux servers in the cloud (even though we were not using that term very much by then) and then became the need to build a web site, and then graphics, and to add more functionalities, and then you see the point...

That also means I'm in the FOSS since then as well but the main scripting language at the time was PERL and you could connect and manage database with mysql, and slowly that migrated to become mainly PHP as server scripting all while HTML, CSS, and JavaScript were getting just better and better. And as a searcher I've also observed the birth and growth to world domination of the GAFAM pack and all its repercussions on the citizens of the world as we all start to realize now (though not the IT guys ).
And its along my research for getting solutions for entrepreneurs to allow them get out of GAFAM by using FOSS and also stop "using" and paying all the needed SaaS with monthly fees, that add up month after month with every little tool needed to do busness online, and thus also loosing full control and privacy on data, that a few years back I stumled upon CLOURON !

Today, I can take and manage absolutely any kind of digital project because I've been doing so, many times for a long time. I've been working with many big names in today's digital marketing fields whom today own some very large and very well known SaaS packages sold for several years now. I've been more or less out of the active business, while maintaning several assets, for about 7-8 years because my half has been very sick though I'm getting back on a pace for two years now.

Now, I was getting up to speed at the same time this sanitary crisis came upon us but that's brought more opportunities for people like us because now it's like everyone is suddenly realising the need to be digital in many ways and for many reasons and I strongly believe cloudron could help us bring so many solutions for so many situations it's just mind boggling. So, if we can help each other interested in this busness to grab a bunch of this market and help them getting digital as easily and cost effectively as possible, I think we could all be profitable of taking advantage of this kind of cooperation.

Feel free to contact me about this at anytime.
Andy
https://AndreFoisy.com
https://WebSuiteSupport.com

[marcusquinn]

I'm working on something for everyone. Please keep pinging your interest in here and I'll share more when ready, hopefully a few weeks...

[murgero]

@marcusquinn

I am available for app development (both porting to Cloudron and new app development)

I am also available to do Cloudron hosting, Cloudron Setup and Install, and can also do Maintenance.

[marcusquinn]

I'm determined to build a business model on what you're all doing with Cloudron now.

I'm thinking al-la-carte menu-pricing for managed app hosting and services.

One of the hardest things for us all to do is cost and price these things, which makes it the best opportunity IMHO.

I'm thinking along the lines of a price for setups and then for monthly maintenance support. Kinda like a Sys Admins & Developers union.

Of course people can always do more for less - but I'm working on the costing and pricing aspect of this as a way for everyone to have a rate-card you can use for reference, with accommodation for discounting and affiliate sales commissions if you so desired.

I'm thinking of a hybrid model, where Cloudroners can offer both the setup and management of the Cloudron Apps where people want the community versions, and rates for the setup and monitoring of their respective enterprise author hosted solutions so we are equally contributing back to those app developers in bringing them enterprise customers where appropriate too.

I feel like all this should have been done 20 years ago and Sys Admin been a professional rate expectation like any other profession - but only Microsoft seem to have cracked that, at great cost to freedoms.

So, thanks to @girish and @nebulon 's vision, I can see a bright and fun future with you all, and doing all I can for the presentation side of things for your esteemed review in the next days and weeks.

[jdaviescoates]

I'm totally up for installing, hosting and supporting Cloudrons for people and need more paid work!

On one inspired night I whacked up the beginnings of https://selfhost.cloud/ to begin offering hosted Cloudrons... but not given it much time of late (in part because I started having wobbles about it not being open source, hence starting the thread about that).

And really I've been thinking it'd be much better to Do It With Others (who e.g. have the skills to automate much of it all using the Gandi and Hetzner APIs).

Also, I really think Cloudron could do with having an intermediate offer between "2 apps and 5 users" and "unlimited apps and users". I think something like what I call The Startup Stack on https://selfhost.cloud, i.e. "up to 10 apps, unlimited users" would be great.

[marcusquinn]

Nice, I can see collaboration opportunities. I'm looking more at bigger businesses though, in the £1m-£50m turnover bracket.

Also thinking, the more Cloudron enables a reseller model, the more Cloudrons to Admin , so the support needs ratio remains while revenue and profits should rise.

Working on this every day now, will share more soon.

[murgero]

@jdaviescoates Can I assist on that? I have infrastructure on OVH, Kimsufi, and DO.

[marcusquinn]

@murgero Yup, I'm thinking along the lines of templating services for retainers with al-la-carte menu pricing, so anyone can do it, as a team, collective or independently. Cloudron covers the stack admin, we bring more clients.

Basically, the VAR/MSP business-model but with a rate-card so everyone can achieve respectable rates and retainers that are relatively standardised across providers and clients.

I have some good email flows for email marketing to pick up clients too, so will move onto that once I have the whole rates and presentations side of things sketched out.

[jdaviescoates]

@marcusquinn said in Poll: Freelance Availability for Retainers:

Nice, I can see collaboration opportunities. I'm looking more at bigger businesses though, in the £1m-£50m turnover bracket.

Probably wise from a business point of view

[jdaviescoates]

@murgero you very likely could assist, yes

Do you think you could help automate the set-up using Hetzner and Gandi APIs?

I like Hetzner because it's cheap, has a great user interface and it's powered by 100% renewable energy.

Gandi are also renewably powered and are one of the more ethical registers, I like their No Bullshit philosophy:

https://www.gandi.net/en-GB/no-bullshit

So to start with a least I want to use them.

In the future hopefully offer other 100% renewable servers too (perhaps with Netcup, even cheaper, but much worse UX, 1984 hosting not quite as cheaper but really nice small company - although the biggest host in Iceland - committed to free software and free speech etc).

Ideally I want to have our own co-op owned servers in a co-op owned data centre (which there are in the UK), but bootstrapping with Hetzner and Gandi seems like a good first move.

[marcusquinn]

@jdaviescoates Smaller businesses really should be doing a lot themselves anyway.

In my experience the penny-conscious need all the self-managed economies and confidence they can get, whereas the big-ballers just need it done and covered within the time it takes to approve a quote.

[marcusquinn]

@jdaviescoates TBH with the Fibre speeds we get in Jersey to every home, I'm tempted to make my next move with room for a mini-server farm

[jdaviescoates]

@marcusquinn understandable!

[jdaviescoates]

@marcusquinn said in Poll: Freelance Availability for Retainers:

@jdaviescoates Smaller businesses really should be doing a lot themselves anyway.

Many simply don't have the in house people with enough tech confidence.

[marcusquinn]

@jdaviescoates Yeah, and that's where our jobs come in. My main job is design & UX. Every user problem or question i see as our problem to solve. I can see we thing similarly on that anyway.

Convenience features are just time-saves for focus on the more valuable data-structure designs in systems that always have a mix of common and unique with every business. I like to solve the common so users can focus on the unique.

[robi]

@marcusquinn said in Poll: Freelance Availability for Retainers:

Convenience features are just time-saves for focus on the more valuable data-structure designs in systems that always have a mix of common and unique with every business. I like to solve the common so users can focus on the unique.

That's called automation.

[JOduMonT]

@marcusquinn said in Poll: Freelance Availability for Retainers:

I feel like all this should have been done 20 years ago and Sys Admin been a professional rate expectation like any other profession - but only Microsoft seem to have cracked that, at great cost to freedoms.

RedHat and SUSE also cracked it..

So how it goes ?
I'm also in IT since forever; start programming at 8 years old in BASIC then building network with IPX/SPX, ...
anyway
I also had this kind of idea, like where old Geek back wise kids to gain confidence and clients;
it was in 2020 when the C.H.A.T.O.N.S. started.