Ask HN: Viability of selling expertise in languages for academic purposes

I have a friend that is currently doing her Master’s thesis and will need to use R for statistical work. She has no programming experience and little R experience. I’m not a professional programmer but do it for fun, for open-source or personal needs. I have some experience with the likes of ruby, bash, html, css, javascript, and processing.

Since her deadline is looming I’ve decided to learn R to help her. I figured it’d be easier for me, due to my programming background. So far, that seems about right. I can quickly find newbish mistakes and help with understanding the documentation of the commands she needs.

This got me thinking. What if I learn languages used in academic circles (R and LaTeX come to mind) and then sell my expertise? I’m thinking of academics that need sections of their work done in those tools but have little time or skill. They might prefer spending both on the rest of their study, hiring me to help with the technical bit.

Is this a viable idea? I’ve read (from patio11?) students and teachers are the worst consumers/clients, as they never want to spend money. Perhaps researchers are a bit different in that regard.

I’m mostly interested in the LaTeX / other languages part of the question. I haven’t enjoyed R much and it’s clear programming experience is not enough if the client doesn’t have a grasp of the statistic behind the models.

Is anyone having success doing this, freelancer or not? Is it worthwhile? Any tips to get started (including languages I might not know about)?