How would you start a site like clarity? Specifically asking from the telecoms setup side.

Hi there, I know this can be a frustrating problem.. I've been on Clarity since 2012 when its creator, Dan Martell, invited me and several others to the launch event and asked us to sign up as experts. For the first few years, I had hardly any calls. Also, it seemed like only those in the IT startup space were getting any traction. This was frustrating for a small business advisor like me who mostly works in the world of bricks and mortar. Things started to change for me after a few key things: 1. I started to drive my own 'tribe' to call me on Clarity. This increased my reviews and call stats on the platform and I believe this made my profile more attractive to Clarity 'native' traffic. 2. Clarity has been growing its reach. I'm meeting more and more callers who are not in the 'online startup' space who found me on Clarity. 3. More and more of the 'online startup' people are actually creating real businesses and have real business problems that I can help with... meaning they're actually having sales, organizational problems, partner concerns, etc.. not just chasing Angel Investors with their ideas. 4. I started to regularly check for public questions I could answer and I know this has led to several calls. I hope this helps, If you'd like me to review your Clarity profile and give some specific direct feedback, just arrange a call. Thanks David www.DavidCBarnett.com

I'm a software developer at Clarity and I built the weekly digest email that I'm assuming you are referring to. I can assure you that we do not spy on you and can't keep track of what you have searched for on Google. The subject of the email is the first question shown in the email. The questions that we feature are chosen based on some internal factors, mainly popularity.

Their phone system works really and simply delivers what is expected. I think having an availability time calendar would be very beneficial so that scheduling matches our availability. Being able to record calls and charge clients an additional fee for that would be great. Also, screen sharing would be good too.

The way I see things, a pay-per-minute phone consultation ought to involve no sales pitch whatsoever. Nobody wants to pay for that, and nobody should. Consulting and sales are utterly different roles. Mutually exclusive, in fact. Is your value proposition external to the call or internal? A consulting call ought to be self-contained. By the time a client hangs up, they ought to be in a better position than where they started – with no further obligation to pay us. So ask yourself what the purpose of the phone call is. If your goal is to sell a product or service – a useful WordPress plugin in this case – then the call is a sales presentation not a consultation, and it ought to be free. The hard truth of sales is that a large percentage of prospects (the majority, usually) won't buy, even after a 30-minute presentation about the virtues of your offering. Time spent talking to dead ends must be factored in to your price and recouped by successful sales. Adding that cost as a fee for the sales pitch itself won't work out well. This is sometimes a tough distinction to make. In my own case, I offer a number of services (e.g. brand name creation) that go beyond the scope of a 15-minute phone call. When someone is paying me $5 per minute, I don't want to squander their time and money by explaining some other paid service! So the rule I've set myself is to stick to problems I can solve on the phone. When it's appropriate to explain the broader services that I offer, I try to do so in a non-paying context. Mainly through email. There's nothing wrong with using a free Clarity.fm call for a sales pitch. But it does sound like you're using phone calls in order to pitch a purchase; so charging for such calls would probably backfire.

Easy: answer questions. I love to focus on questions within my defined area of expertise that don't have any answers already posted. I check this almost daily and jump in on questions I feel that I can add value to. You can also review other questions that have answers already, and offer your insights. Your message may be slightly different than other experts -- but there is beauty in that! Not every user will identify with every expert. Most of the consulting calls I have booked as a result of Clarity come from folks who read my answer to a question, not the original user who posted the question. To see success, you have to put yourself out there and commit to investing time to the community. All the best, -Shaun