[NicoJuicy]

Things (in my experience) that are hard to sell to smb's:

- Security updates + framework

- A/B testing

- 20 hours of upgrades and modifications upfront (charging per hour works or naming it differently and including it in your price)

- Monthly support

What i can sell more easily:

- Backups (else, they have to do it themselves)

- Hosting

- Webapps (email marketing, invoicing, ...)

- Google Apps for business

[bdunn]

I've done, and know quite a few people, who are currently selling framework updates (https://railslts.com), a/b testing as a service (https://draft.nu/revise/), and not to mention selling blocks of time upfront — e.g. the retainer model a lot of agencies employ.

(Re)selling hosting, webapps, etc. situates you as a middleman; The margins are much better if you not not only sell them on an Optimizely account, but run it for them also.

[glimcat]

Optimizely takes minutes to sign up for - and they're always looking to make that easier, and to make more people aware of the value they provide. In contrast, the expertise to conduct tests that alter revenue outlook takes somewhat longer to develop.

Sure, people could go out and spend the time to learn just about anything. In practice, they won't, because that's competing with all the other anythings they could be doing.

Sell the thing that actually has significant barrier to entry.

You take care of the easy thing too, because making the client spend meaningful attention on something that would take you five minutes is just silly, and you're there so they don't have to worry about that stuff. But sell the hard thing.