Show HN: I Built My Dad a SQL Consulting Page | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: I Built My Dad a SQL Consulting Page

sqlstanley.com

27 pointsaarondf16 comments

Hey HN, I just wanted to post this here and ask for feedback / advice.

My dad is a genius and has been working with SQL Server for almost as long as I've been alive. He recently left his last job and is considering doing consulting, so I built this page for him. I'd love any feedback on the copy or advice for him as he's getting started. I really want to see him succeed in this, and will do anything I can to help.

Thank you!

It's a nice, clean page. I like it. Can you shrink the header image size? It is 1.4 MB. A high-quality JPG might save a good chunk of that for the same quality and the PNG.

Oh yeah.. That's huge. Let me do that.

Thanks!

Impressive! Have you thought about charging for this as a service?

I haven't, at all. I assume you mean putting together consulting pages like this? Interesting idea.

> I assume you mean putting together consulting pages like this?

Indeed. I'd be interested, as I don't have time to put one together myself, and am an infrastructure engineer (and have no frontend experience).

Huh, who knew.

Shoot me an email at aaron d francis at (googles email service)

Thanks, I'll have an email off to you tonight.

And regarding "Huh, who knew", while I won't go so far as to say "everything has value", if you can create value for someone else, you can charge for it.

I'd highly recommend you check out patio11's work on this: http://www.kalzumeus.com/start-here-if-youre-new/

Sure, just charge him an affiliate fee for every lead you send in his direction. You both win! ;)

Great copy! My only issue is with the "How I Can Fix Your SQL Server Woes". Everything prior is the right level on the ladder of abstraction. This section needs to be more specific though since it is the last area besides the testimonials to handle potential client objections.

It needs to have actual use cases where your Dad's expertise helped these businesses. You can think of it as the bullet points in a resume. It may also help to include some kind of case study that formalizes your Dad's offering.

Speaking of copy, i would rephrase the sentence at very end: "Stanley developed a reporting utility to analyze and uncover possible issues with future clients before they became a problem."

... who became a problem? the future client? (or their data) :)

Also, whole page is 1.5MB, 1.3mb of that is a photo of subway rails on top which, while cute, adds zero value. Consider compressing or replacing that.

Great copy otherwise!

Updated the image :)

Thanks!

There's a bit of a run-on sentence in the first paragraph - it could be revised to "You know that SQL is amazingly fast, and should be able to process massive amounts of data quickly..."

I like it, good luck. Couple of things to add:

- where are you based? I'm guessing UK based purely on the railway station image, but other countries might well use similar constructions :-)

- does your Dad want to do onsite or remote? I'm guessing the enterprises most likely to engage him might insist on onsite

- does your Dad want to work on projects, or is it exclusively short term troubleshooting he's keen on?

>- where are you based? I'm guessing UK based purely on the railway station image, but other countries might well use similar constructions :-)

Dallas/Fort Worth Area according to Linkedin

Looks good... well-written also

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