[teh]

I've been joking with friends that my next job will be AWS efficiency guru. I've somewhat optimized our own use, but I think I could use similar, simple rules to get 20% out of a 500k / month budget.

Give me what I save you in 2 months and I'll have a good business :)

[aresant]

Go do it!

I used that exact same model in Conversion Rate Optimization - get your conversion rate up, give me 30% of what we improve.

And built that into a 20+ person digital agency billing millions of dollars a year before being bought out.

Exactly how I did that and you can to:

(1) Wrote topical, detail rich posts similar to the parent here about problems I was solving in CRO for a handful of customers, never disclosing confidential customer info.

(2) Marketed those posts strategically. EG I wrote one about "Which trust symbol gives you the highest return on conversion rate." and then literally just bought Google Adwords of people searching for that question! StackOverflow and other forums also are great ways to market by answering questions (free + put your details in contact info) or running ad campaigns specifically on those topics ($5k+).

(3) Turned the best performing / most viewed posts into "pitches" for speaking gigs at materially similar conferences, most were accepted and I became an "authority".

Every post / conference / etc had a little "Want us to fix it for you? Full service, performance fee model." banner or mention.

Work poured in after that and we were lucky enough to be very choosy.

If you can SAVE large enterprises money and are willing to do it on a performance basis you've got a business.

[austinhutch]

When you say "trust symbol" do you mean the "verisign" logos and similar? If so - do you have real data to prove these make a difference in conversion rate? I have clients that come to me parroting the same tips and I imagine they are all reading the same nearly identical blog posts out there making this claim.

[Im_a_throw_away]

This sounds super interesting! Where can we learn more about your story? Do you have an email or Twitter to contact you?

[omarchowdhury]

That's awesome, do you have more information about your acquisition?

[aresant]

This was several years ago before we had the "growth hackers" lexicon.

One of our customers bought the entire company to get a hold of the core team + essentially continued the "30%" deal as a long term incentive as convertible equity.

Was a good run, and reinforces my post of if you can bring measurable / substantial value to large enterprise companies amazing things can happen.

Large enterprise have fun accounting terms like "capitalizing an acquisition", eg they don't buy you out of cash flow. And can even carry debt on the purchase / incentive programs etc that not only make you more valuable to them, but create incentives for them to buy smaller companies.

Happy to answer any more specific questions.

[omarchowdhury]

What would you say is the most important, specific skill required in conversion rate optimization?

Is it copywriting? Is it UI/UX? Is it analytics?

Or would it be fairer to say CRO is holistic, requiring a multitude of skills?

[aresant]

Great question, by the end of the process we were experts @ holistic level.

But started with very basic web design skills at first.

From the start key "skill" for the pitch / and our clients was we had the BANDWIDTH to focus on implementing testing as a regular / rigorous process for them.

EG most - even big cos - wind up with their good web dev resources completely tied up with 100 other things.

And 10 departments competing for their attention.

I came in and said we can do this, full service and you just have to approve the tests and give us a dev environment.

But started with just basic web design skills / willingness to read the multitude of good resources / books / blogs / thought leaders on CRO an apply their ideas.

EG - Common CRO theme - "try different, high-contrast button colors on your call to action"

Ok, I can do that.

- Take existing page

- set up optimizely or VWO (at the time we used home brew or GoogleWO!)

- make some really great buttons (or outsource on elance for $10)

- get client buy in

- set up the test

- ensure production readiness / testing

- go live

- provide nice reporting format for client weekly that lets them stay involved and see results, and have confidence in your ability to execute.

- prepare next test while first one is running, and remember that a huge % of your best ideas will fail, be agnostic to results but be statistically honest and educate clients under same process / instruction

Simple example, but you can ramp the complexity up from there.

Like "better to have this "sign up now" button go to another page w/form or pop a modal window w/form?"

and on down the list, the CRO blogs / experts / etc have 1000 ideas.

And over time got better about understanding what did / didn't work across clients.

So my win rate crept up from say 20% of tests significant win to 50%+ out of gate.

And every person on my team I hired because we wanted to run a test that I / we couldn't implement ourselves :)

What's your specific interest / skill set that you're trying to adapt over?

[jackgolding]

I have an analytics background and have been applying for multiple CRO jobs. It's very frustrating the breadth of skills that people want the inhouse CRO guy to have (i.e I've had interview questions on JS frameworks, very advanced stats, non-trivial SQL, CMS systems, photoshop, SEO, paid search, Salesforce ...) especially when I know a lot of whole agencies couldn't tick all those boxes.

Would love to start freelancing this stuff but it seems like it needs so much personal branding

[QuinnyPig]

I actually do this as a full time thing; I started a consultancy to fix horrifying AWS bills.

Something I've learned is that flat fee pricing makes the most sense-- while tempting, the other models are off-putting.

Hourly is a great way to starve to death, and "percentage of savings" grows difficult to quantify. "Okay, you just recommended the following reserved instance purchases. Is this really the best for us, or does it boost the number you're taking a percentage of?"

It's very easy to end up misaligned with your clients as you go down that path...

[user5994461]

Put a maximum amount to the fee. Let's say 100k for the month I am here.

[QuinnyPig]

If you're volunteering as a test case, I'm game! :-)

[user5994461]

Nope, I'm the consultant advising you how to charge more. Actually a daily $500 per day + 10% of the savings with an upper limit of 100k is an easier sell.

My bills are so optimized you wouldn't make a penny :p

[officelineback]

I'm pretty much that in my current job only with a salary. Here's why: I can make all the recommendations I want but change has to be driven by the will of the higher ups, often as high as C-level folks (CIO/CTO). So you pay me to make recommendations, not to actually save you the money, because the second part is largely out of my control.

Having said that, all the cost savings initiatives I've spearheaded are on my resume and LinkedIn profile and I take great satisfaction in optimizing those environments to save the client money.

[sly010]

The simplest one might be to convince a company to reserve 3 years worth of AWS resources and paying upfront. I am in this situation right now, but and it's a tough pill to swallow.

I decided that all of my personal projects will be GCE. It is much more cost efficient already and Google will soon allow me to commit to future usage and pay my commitment as I go (Right now AWS forces you to pay upfront to get the same discount (~50%))

[QuinnyPig]

With a couple of exceptions, 3 year RIs are a poor move.

You're locking in pricing, and opting out of both newer instance classes and future price reductions during that time period.

Generally, they're only useful for "that database we WILL NEVER MOVE," or if you're writing portions of your cloud spend as CapEx and want to amortize depreciation.

[sly010]

I agree on AWS it's a hard move. On GCE, however, you would be buying CPU and memory units, not machines, which to me is much more appealing. Even if the the price drops 50% every year, i would break even.

[cheez]

I don't think that's a bad proposition at all. If I were a business person running on AWS, I'd do it.

[a13n]

Or charge 20% of what you save them over the next year. This way you're charging more overall (especially if their costs are growing). Also your revenue will be more recurring rather than a one time thing. And by the time the 12 months is up, maybe they'll need your service again. :P

[a13n]

Also as a SaaS founder running on AWS, I would totally do this once our AWS bill is in the 4-5 figures.

[QuinnyPig]

It's almost like clockwork. Companies start wondering around $10K a month; they start doing something about it at $50K a month. I can almost set my watch by it.

This turns into a fun parlor trick when I can estimate a client's bill based upon the story they tell me!

[vacri]

We got pinged by our CEO to reduce our AWS bill which was $8k at the time. After a bit of work, we got it down by a little over a grand. One lunch, he said "guys, what are you doing about that bill?"... "What, we got it down by over a grand!"... "Yeah, but the exchange rate has gone the other way..."

Gotta love the Australian dollar. The Australian economy is solid - about to set a world record for longest continuing period without recession, including the GFC years - but the AUD swings around like a mad animal.

[user5994461]

The savings are too miserable to pay a consultant.

Remember that he has to charge at least $1000 a day. He's more expensive than your entire bill.

[QuinnyPig]

Right. Surprisingly, the comment you're responding to resembles some of my clients. This is a business problem.

In this case it's not "save us a few grand" that they're asking for-- the real ask is "help us analyze and forecast our spend as we continue to grow." Identify the knobs and dials that impact infrastructure costs, devise a costing model that states "each additional user costs $X to service," identify what makes sense to arbitrage between AWS and other providers / on-prem...

If I'm being honest, "lower the bill" is where it starts, but not nearly where it ends. :-)

[user5994461]

Agreed, consulting is more than just lowering the bill once.

That doesn't change that they don't have the funds to pay the fees though.

[sametmax]

2 months ? That's cheap. Make it a year.

[SatvikBeri]

Like many others, I'm interested, do you have a preferred way to contact you?

[teh]

Hi, drop me a line at [e-mail] :)

[andreapaiola]

If I have to give that to you it's not "savings"... :D

[xj9]

but you do save money every month after that!

[rokhayakebe]

Remember LowerMyBills.com. You will LowerMySaasBills.com