Very interesting article. We are also working on a small side project, called https://www.MetaGrader.com
We are aware of the aesthetics of the site, and working on that, but we have some discussions on how to monetise it; should we go for a credit system (with weekly reports about your site, historic information, automated improvement tips), should we go for selling expert advice, or should we focus on other things, like advertising, reselling services like pingdom/gtmetrix, etc?
Your back end product could be something like "managed customized cloud hosting" (a.k.a. 3 $5 digitocean droplets) $85/mo. I did something like this with a wordpress hosting product we launched. $50+/mo. We just used a specialized hardened image on digitalocean. The lowest product was a single $5 droplet for the wordpress install and a $10 droplet for the MySQL box.
Or hold back some of your recommendations, generate a report with contact information so they can get in touch with you and set up a service agreement giving them EXACT things to change. Try and set up a retainer for 5hrs/month @ $200/mo then tack on specialized hosting!
Much appreciated for your feedback. I think we'll go for option 2, especially for the recommendations. Also, one of our services will be continuous monitoring of your ranking and performance, so that any changes done to your site are reflected in a timely fashion. This could match with a subscription service.
At the moment, I think we don't want to recommend specialised hosting when we cannot prove it will benefit their site, but we might add a host comparison to get better data on this.
Thanks again for the help, your feedback is much appreciated!
We are aware of the aesthetics of the site, and working on that, but we have some discussions on how to monetise it; should we go for a credit system (with weekly reports about your site, historic information, automated improvement tips), should we go for selling expert advice, or should we focus on other things, like advertising, reselling services like pingdom/gtmetrix, etc?
We would value your opinion in this!