Orion,

I totally agree with you. It's definitely a referral business but when you do get referred, it can be very profitable. I'm trying to get my processes down. The processes I'm trying to nail down are the ones that take the longest and repetitive. e.g. support and writing proposals. Support in terms of if a client takes up on my support contracts, how do you go about to do it w/ minimal effor on my side. Proposal is another one that takes forever to create but once you have a template to work with, I find out it works well. The nice thing about this biz is that virtually all support functions can done online.

Everything counts when you're small and just starting out.

Yeah, there're definitely cheap clients out there mainly because they don't value their data. I try to stay away from the "fix it" part of the business. It comes with a commodity market like the PC market. I generally sell to upsell solutions that integrates well with their business. Hopefully, they can see through this as "value". But I do say, small biz is a tough market.

I don't want to count out direct marketing because I think it may work and generate some leads if done correctly. Without a decent base, referral just don't work.

I sort of brain storm this biz on and off for awhile but didn't really hit how much is involved until I took it seriously.