Have you had any fussy clients who keeps asking you put in extras or tweaks at no cost, and how did you deal with them? Or is your report delivered lock stock and barrel.

Hi TS,
This is an interesting topic to discuss and judging by the way you told us of how you entered this line of work, it makes me happy to know that anyone can enter as long as they have access to a computer. Or do you actually need to have some sort of foundation in business or accounting?? Please correct me if i am wrong.

Another question is:
Is this skillset crucial for inspiring business owners or is it something like "good to have, but not really necessarily"??

Thanks.

Good to meet a fellow report writer - I believe youngfags call us "content creators" these days.

I bet there are many similarities in our research process - especially in my research agency writing line of business. Having said this, the differences probably arise due to the B2C nature of your audience and the B2B nature of mine. Stylistically, I'm probably a lot more dry and I can take more liberties in using jargon. The audience knows how to interpret it. I try to be as concise as possible when writing a draft; instead of trying to "make it interesting", I'm trying to "make it as digestible as possible in very little time". I'll give you an example, a sentence I wrote a few days ago reads like this:

Most of the growth in the life insurance market has been in investment-linked products which have increased at CAGRs of 17.2% and 7.9% in terms of total sums assured and the total number of policies in force respectively over the 2014 to 2018 period.

Given this, my reports are probably a lot longer. I haven't done a word count but it feels like 20,000-25,000 words per report. I don't have a fixed quota but, if I were to guess, I do about 1,000-1,500 words per day since I write one of these reports every 2-4 weeks depending on how productive I am.

All this, of course, describes standardised research reports. The bespoke reports I have done in the past vary widely and it's difficult to generalise. But, for illustration, one bespoke research report I did involved 2 weeks of interviews with about 20 interviewees, transcription of the interviews, conducting an online survey, statistical analysis of the results of the survey, and writing up a report to address the client's research questions. That was maybe 200-300 hours of work with the vast majority of hours (150-200 hours) in design and analysis rather than actual writing.

The worst clients I have had are those who feigned interest in paying for research services but ended up being people who wanted their questions answered for free. When I was younger and more naive, I would spent quite a bit of time entertaining these questions - hoping to score a client mah - but after a few times of spending tens of hours on free work and then getting ghosted by the client, I became wiser.

There are always going to be some fussy clients and, to be fair, you have to give them some time to address deficiencies in the draft. I try to keep this to a limited "editing period", something like 10% of the total time for writing the report. So, a 200 hour report means that the client will get about 20 hours worth of edits. But I try to get it right the first time round so that I don't have to spend too much time on edits.

The funniest request I had was when I was doing a report on consumer finance in Malaysia. We have quite a big informal lending sector and the client quite seriously asked if I could do some face-to-face interviews with loan sharks. Uh, no?! I couldn't imagine going to an ahlong and asking things like, "Bro, what is your average loan amount? What is the indicative interest rate on your loan?" I talked to someone at PDRM instead to get high level insights. That was the one time I remember having to push back the hardest against a client.

TS got lobang sub con some job for me?

after BN turun , i no job le

do you have difficulties in sourcing for raw data sometimes ?
bigger firms have ready database and economies of scale that they can purchase market data from researchers, im talking about frost and sullivan, smith zander, protege etc

i am a research analyst but in equity, i sometimes have problems obtaining relatable sources especially for industry/sectorial reports

Any sample of report for preview?

Thanks again.

Do you take a percentage upfront, say 50% before you begin your work? And I suppose it is easier for you to just quote a fixed sum for the piece of work, since you have estimated the hours and there is a fixed budget anyway?

It depends on the industry. It is easier for highly regulated industries - banking and insurance - and much harder for fragmented industries like F&B or retailing. For an industry report like those written by Frost & Sullivan, Smith Zander, or BMI Research, the quantity of data that I need is actually very little. While I will write about individual companies, I will rarely do a deep dive of the financial statements unlike you equity analysts. I might calculate some basic ratios like ROA, ROE, interest coverage ratio, net debt ratio, but that's about it. At the industry level, I will mostly encounter static data and, even if it's time series data, it's primarily annual data. I have definitely never needed to collect intraday or any other high frequency data, I am not in that line of work.

But you're right, economies of scale matter a lot in this business and that's where I fall short. All I can say is that I have to hustle a bit. In the past, this meant registering as a freelancer for a few agencies, just so that I could have access to their databases (I am not paying for Euromonitor on my own). I've even tried a 2-month trial of the Bloomberg terminal. Now those were 2 good months but I can never justify paying the US$2,000 a month at my scale.

New clients definitely. Old clients no need, I've held on to the reliable paymasters.

Yes, I quote a fixed sum but can justify if needed. Otherwise, I just serve the sausages to the customers who don't always want to know how the sausages are made.

you need assistant or not? i have access to bloomberg terminal haha

How do you sources your samples for qual and quant study? Agencies or freelance?
Who pay the incentive? How much you pay for incentive?
Got need for FGD sample? Im interested to join if incentive is good and not more than an hour and not far.

Pm me in future if need fgd samples. Just tell me your requirement / incentive / location and I will help you share with my family and friends even if I not qualify to join it.

This post has been edited by wanted111who: Apr 10 2019, 09:21 PM

For real? I don't need an assistant. I should be asking you guys if you are looking for an assistant like me, since you're the ibanker, not me.

Sorry bro, I don't have my own database of contacts. I get an agency who has their own panel of respondents. I looked at this as a possible business opportunity at one point but I realised it's way too hard of a business for me to build on my own.

Actually, if you or your family are looking for some side income as part of an FGD panel, you might want to check if people like Kantar TNS, GfK, or Rakuten AIP are recruiting. They're the ones I look up if I need a panel.

its good business really, IMR in prospectus can cost minimum MYR50k for local firms, not frost and sullivan

Yeah, but you need to be a firm to get into that kind of business, not someone who does these reports in his pyjamas.

just want to share the disparity here, but you work alone so all the better for you. what is your day job?

Do these firms need to be accredited? Or just about anyone can set up a company and do these stuff for IPO prospectuses?

I have a parent who is terminally ill so I have to spend a lot of my time taking on some of the care responsibilities. Both parents are close to their 80s so they need an extra pair of hands. I tried to get some AI-type project work in the past with some other partners but I couldn't make it work. Care responsibilities are too intense. Chemo and other related expenses are also too high so I've needed to prioritise near-term cash over long-term opportunities. Such is life.

I don't think they really need to be accredited but it helps a lot if they are members of a renowned market research association like ESOMAR. Of course, that alone isn't going to help you win IMR work - having lobang also helps.

Thank you

great that you have found an opportunity and niche for yourself, at this exact point in your life nonetheless. im sure your expertise will come in handy should you decide to scale up in the future