August 10, 2006
VoIPing For Profit - Ether Consulting In Action
I've previously covered Ether, a voice-based (pay-per-call) web service that lets you set up consulting practice with just a phone, email and Internet site. This is not a VoIP service per se, however, you can use a VoIP phone number for accepting calls. (Jyve, on the other hand, offers similar functionality but works over top of Skype.)
I just revisted the Ether site recently, to see what's changed since the got out of beta. On their blog page, I noticed a list of websites using Ether and browsed through them. There are a few using Ether very creatively, but I haven't called any of them to see if they're actually getting any busines. Here are few interesting listings where the charge is not by the hour:
The AdventistPastors has Skypecast podcasts, and advice (presumably spiritual) for parishioners via Ether is billed at $1/min.
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, not to be confused with the world-famous musician, has an organization called the Art of Living, which provides a free Ether call, presumably to discuss other paid services.
Can't come up with something for dinner? Enterprising foodie and food-blogger, Greg, is offering affordable recipe help ($2.50 for 5 minutes) or a dinner idea ($1.00/15 min). Truly ingenius. Makes me laugh, but you'd be surprised at how many people have trouble making dinner on a regular basis.
Having job troubles? A severance package lawyer is offering 20 minutes of advice for $95. Need help with with your website development? Tyler Hall charges only $2.00/min for consultation. Can't figure out what gadget to get? Optical Poptitude is only charging $3 for 15 minutes of advice. For on and offline media publishing advice, it'll only cost you $0.35/min from the website Apple Week.
If you couple Ether with a plug'n'play VoIP device such as Digifone, you can bring the cost of setting up and running a consulting business essentially down to nearly nothing.
--
Did you enjoy this post?
« Digifone Plug'N'Play VoIP Device For Regular Handsets | Main | VoIP Roundup - Thur Aug 10/06 »
