Since 2009, I have been making a living working from home writing market research reports. Ask me anything you like! Where possible, I'll try and edit this post later on to reflect my answers to good/popular questions. A few Q&A type questions to get the ball rolling.

WTF do you actually do?!
There are broadly two types of jobs that form the bulk of my work which depends on the types of client I get:
(i) Research agencies want high level reports, e.g. "Retailing in Malaysia 2018" or "Oil and Gas Malaysia 2018". This involves looking for a lot of information from the press, databases, etc. and compiling them into a report. The idea is that the reader will be able to get a high level view of what Retailing in Malaysia looked like in 2018 after a quick read through of the report.

(ii) End clients have more specific requirements. For instance, a client might have a business idea, e.g. "I want to set up a cafe on the 1st floor in Cheras" and then I would might do some of the ground work to help the client decide if they want to take the idea further or not. I also get foreign clients who want to bring a product into Malaysia and want to know what the market is like, e.g. "What is the market for Korean strawberries like in the Klang Valley?" Again, it is about presenting the information to them to help them decide whether to take it further.

Are the hours flexible?
Absolutely. This is one of the pros of this line of work and exactly why I got into this gig in the first place. My clients generally do not care if I put x number of hours into their project per day, or that I must be at the desk from 9-5. What they would like to see is updates every 1-2 weeks and progress towards the end deliverable.

How do I get started in this business?
There is no great secret in getting into this business: apply! In my case, I had a friend who was in this line of work and who was exiting the business. She recommended me to Euromonitor International who tends to specialise in FMCG research. They still seem to hire freelance in-country analysts, so if you want to look for an excellent place to learn and have a look at how the business works, Euromonitor might be it. Otherwise, you might look at other market research agencies that produce reports of the same nature. Names that spring to mind include BMI Research, and the Economist Intelligence Unit. Contact them to see if there are any opportunities available.

Do I need to learn any special software to do this work?
In some cases, software helps to speed the work up but it is not necessary. For a freelancer, speed is everything (obviously the quality must be there). Faster writing means more revenue per hour. Excel skills are a must because you will end up doing quite a bit of number crunching. I have used SPSS in the past to do a lot of bulk statistical calculations but I can count the number of projects where I have needed to use SPSS on the fingers of one hand.

Most important /k question: can make 20k?
It is possible but you have to be able to work fast and work a lot. When I started this line of work, I couldn't even come close. But as I became familiar with the tools of the trade, and with what readers and editors are looking for, earnings went up. I could probably have hit the 20k per month mark but this has always been a side gig for me so I've not put in enough hours to regularly make a 20k/month income. For someone who wants to do this more diligently, it is completely possible.

But how much can you really make?
It depends on how much time you are willing/able to put into it. I have found I can make about 8k-10k per month for what is a part-time gig, i.e. 60-80 hours per month. Your mileage may vary - higher if you have some real specialist skills, lower if you're totally new to the business. I've not tried to go for the 20k per month from this job, so I'm not sure if that will really work. Going to 20k per month means (i) putting in more hours (obviously) and (ii) finding more clients. The second part arises because it's unlikely there is going to be a single client who will have enough capacity to give you 20k per month worth of work.

This post has been edited by mesothelium: Apr 10 2019, 06:06 PM

Which port are you located at?
How much for BBBJ?

What type of market research do you do and generally used for what purposes?

Are you required to carry out primary researches or mostly secondary?

This post has been edited by sembilan: Apr 10 2019, 03:17 PM

Kaki Cheongster detected oh wai

i dont understand
what exactly do you do?

What's your stock portfolio at the moment and their worth.

how does anyone become a market research? where to apply?

Market research reports? Are you by any chance under a bank's or IB's payroll? I thought the banks already have their whole research teams to do this.

how do u seperate work and vacation since everyday also work can and everyday also vacation can

Your clients are from what industries? Also SME or corporate clients?

Can you explain a bit more about market research. What exactly do you do

About 80% of my work is desk research but this is because I have set it up that way. I have a sick parent at home who needs a lot of care so that limits the amount of time I can round around conducting interviews. Most of my clients are agencies that syndicate research reports to readers so the bulk of the work involves only secondary research. I have done a few projects with heavy primary research requirements but those tend to be requested directly be end clients (more bespoke work).

I generally work with two types of clients:

(i) Research agencies who want high level reports, e.g. "Retailing in Malaysia 2018" or "Oil and Gas Malaysia 2018". This involves looking for a lot of information from the press, databases, etc. and compiling them into a report. The idea is that the reader will be able to get a high level view of what Retailing in Malaysia looked like in 2018 after a quick read through of the report.

(ii) End clients have more specific requirements. For instance, a client might have a business idea, e.g. "I want to set up a cafe on the 1st floor in Cheras" and then I would might do some of the ground work to help the client decide if they want to take the idea further or not. More often than not, I get foreign clients who want to bring a product into Malaysia and want to know what the market is like, e.g. "What is the market for Korean strawberries like in the Klang Valley?" Again, it is about presenting the information to them to help them decide whether to take it further.

Where do you get your jobs from/scan for opportunities?

is it possible for newbies to join you and learn a thing or 2? im interested to earn more actually

Nice job but tedious ones.....coz you data have to be accurate not manipulated

This is an excellent question, thanks for asking. When I started, I was not disciplined and just worked and chilled "whenever". I found that was a bit of a waste of time. I wasn't working properly and I wasn't even relaxing properly. After a while, I found it helpful to set and stick to a regular schedule. Discipline helps so that you won't be thinking of work when you're supposed to be relaxing.

Clients have come from all sorts of industries but there have been more clients from F&B and retail than others. Small enterprises don't normally look for this sort of service unless they are a part of an association. Why spend so much on research when they can just do a little experiment to test the market? That would cost much less and give them much better feedback. So, most of my work comes from medium-large enterprises.

I got into this business by luck - a friend was exiting the industry and recommended me. I've had a few jobs from LinkedIn as well and, in fact, one of my longstanding clients found me entirely randomly from LinkedIn. For more bespoke work, I found that it's good to know lawyers and accountants since they know companies who might be looking for this sort of service. But I've never done too much of that type of work, mainly because it involves a lot of business development time.

do u report ur income to LHDN?

Definitely report every single sen. It's important to maintain good quality records. In fact, I should warn anyone thinking of doing this business not to be cheeky with their taxes. You don't conduct that many transactions a month/year and it doesn't take a lot for the tax authorities to find out if you have been under-reporting your income.

how many %

qual
quanti
desk report
MSS

Thanks for sharing...

You do have an excellent command of the english language so i reckon that is extremely important in your line of work..

do you advertise your services on FB ? Do you rely mainly on recommendations from clients and how much time do you spend
a day working?

how to get client? how do you market yourself?

I don't know how good a teacher I will be since I'm largely self-trained, again, I fell into this business by accident in the first place. But I am happy to try to help.

It's actually easier to be accurate in reporting data rather than taking the time to manipulate it. For desk research, it is important to use good quality sources, e.g. Department of Statistics, BNM, and just cite them. Of course, quality of data is an issue especially when you do research for less developed countries, but you try to just assume it is correct because what choice have you got? For primary research, you can only try to make sure your sample is as unbiased as possible, but after collecting the results, it is much easier (and better) for me to report them accurately than to manipulate them to fit some agenda.

have your client ever caught your lying about the data, or how do you ensure those data that you are referring to are correct?

Don't fall into this trap and lie. There are no vacation day as a freelancer. A day off is either a day unpaid or a day less that you get to spend on the project. MC from the doctor will be useless because you have no one to give it to.

This post has been edited by whyamiblack: Apr 10 2019, 03:55 PM

Why are your replies so long?

How did you find such job?
Is it a permanent job or freelance job?

How is your hourly rate like, and is there a cap for each project?

You should post in serious /k instead of here. A lot of retards infested the thread already.

Anyway, back to question, I'm doing freelancing as well. How do you record your transaction? Do you register SSM?

Desk report maybe 80% by volume, 60% by revenue. The remaining is about 50% quant:50% qual. I'm a bit quant focused but I think qual is important too, because that's where you can really show your insights (if you have any lah).

English language skills are helpful but I think non-essential. The main thing is communicating the message to the client. Of course, for agency work, writing good English helps to reduce your editor's workload and makes your editor happy. Happy editors mean more work and better pay.

I have not advertised. Most of my work is for longstanding clients although I do get a few clients from time to time that have been referred to me either by past clients or by contacts (mostly lawyers and accountants). I spend about 4-5 hours a day working on this and I've spent most of my other working hours trying to start a business. But that bit hasn't worked out. Turns out I'm better writing about businesses than starting them.

Cite, cite, cite religiously! It helps to even take screenshots of the sources so that you are able to justify your figures if a client asks. However, in my experience, clients rarely ask. It might happen once every 2 years.

I'm trying to vomit as much info from my head that I can in the hope of being helpful. Don't want to miss something out.

Hourly rate varies a lot but I am happy if it is higher than RM120 per hour. In practice, clients work within a budget, and if what they want will take too much time and push me too far off the RM120 per hour benchmark, I encourage them to revise their scope of work.

It's not that serious, let people have some fun if they want. More people seem to look at this than serious /k anyway.

At the end of the month, I send an invoice to the clients for all work and record all of that as revenue for tax purposes. I don't have a sole proprietorship, partnership, company, so I file a Borang B to SSM at the end of the month.

So you're the one that writing economic doomsday recession year this n that ?

but can u advise the hidden cafe owner on how to properly manage a cafe business?

Quality tered. Parking

I'm interested to join this type of work force after I read your descriptions.

But how do newbie join? Is there a point of contact or company that they need to get in touch with? Do you have an agent that get the job for you?

I think new joiner like me probably don't even know where to start or find the clients.

(you can PM me if you think this info might be a bit sensitive)

any experience doing market research for IT system? one of my client wants me to justify business requirements for my company IT system that they might want to procure.

so u only summarize n visualize existing (secondary )data that fits ur client needs?

do u conduct interview or distribute surveys to collect primary data?
if yes how are u gonna do for the huge amount on ur own?

do u provide insights from these or just visualization n reporting ?

Hey bro, we can work together.. If your client looking for ISO certification can refer me and I also can refer my client to you

Thanks for your earlier reply.

What are the qualifications you have, and your years of experience (both related and unrelated to this work)?

Some very cool questions here. I'll just group them in one answer.

There is quite a lot of overlap between IB research analysts and consultants with a market research analyst. I think with a bit extra training, each one of these could switch to the other profession with little adjustment problems.

The key difference between an IB analyst and market research is the IB analyst might look at the security - equity/debt/hybrid/derivative - and come up with a
recommendation as to whether it is worth buying/selling/holding. Market research analysts are less concerned about individual companies, much less individual securities, and definitely do not make buy/sell recommendations. Market research analysts tend to consider industry drivers as a whole. Companies are included in the research because they are players within the industry. Macro factors are also considered as they influence the industry in various ways. But the focus is mostly the industry. So, a market research guy shouldn't be making predictions as to the performance of the economy either, this is the area of focus of the economist, perhaps.

There's probably more overlap between market research and consulting, and market researchers do tend to use some of the analytical frameworks that consultants use. But, unlike consultants, market researchers don't make recommendations on what to do for individual circumstances. We - at least I - am not, say, a cafe expert so I might not be able to tell you how to optimise your cafe business. I will have insights on things like optimal opening hours (for cafes as a whole), product pricing, product mix, demographics of the residents in the area, but I will not be an operational consultant. I will leave that to guys who have expertise running cafes.

Secondary data analysis ended up being most of the work I do. But I have also done surveys and interviews. Getting the numbers is not easy, that's for sure. For Internet surveys, I use third party providers who have ready panels that they can distribute the survey to. It's not feasible for me, as a solo warrior, to build that infrastructure myself. For interviews, I've hired admin staff to cold call people who might be willing to participate - sometimes, I've done this myself. You'll be surprised that there are people out there who are very happy to talk about their business and who are very forthcoming with information.

Visualisation and reporting is most of what clients are looking for. Where possible, I try to provide as much insights as I can because I think that is a value add that clients appreciate.

do u advertised your service at freelancer.com, they rate is not very good. taking a huge cut out of your service, do you use other platform?

You are like a human Google. How much you can earn in a month? Rm10k?

Dude I'm interested in becoming one, where do I start? Any links etc?

Are you open to another job? I am a co-founder of an online platform and am looking for someone reliable who knows his/her way around financial/investment topics (global). Doesn't have to be an expert, but good at research and writes well.

Inbox me if you're available.

Buy gold.
#doomsdaypreppers

quality thread.

did u ever had any client from hell?if yes what kind of demand did they ask you to do and how u deal with it?

This is where I reveal I am oldfag (39 years this year).

My degree was in computer science and I spent maybe 3 years in programming and sysadmin, and then 2 years as consultant and business development. Did some further studying in finance and have now been doing market research for 9-10 years.

parking dulu

very interesting thread

finally some good quality topic in /k

topkek TS

Issit wrong to cook-up the accounts just to give higher dividends prior to GE14 ?

How cunning is put option in buying shares only to find out the seller refused to buy it later?

Do u write about financial frauds, money laundering also?

Thanks again.

Do you still pitch your services, or do you tag to research companies?

Hi TS, I'm currently working as a writer for a local entrepreneurship/property magazine as well. Reading through your job description, I'm curious as to what are the major differences between both our line of work?

I see a general overlap in job scope. I do conduct interviews with industry players on a regular basis, dig out secondary research reports and RAW data from NGOs and governmental websites, compile them into a neatly, easily digestible form. The only difference I can see is that I am not qualified to make any recommendations, and the content of your work is largely dictated by the client instead of the general public.

I'm also curious as to the output efficiency of your line of work. My general quota is 700-1000 words per day, 2400-ish words per article and I have heard worse horror stories from content mills as well. How large are your reports are in general, and how long does it usually take to complete them?

I was introduced to this business by a friend. Actually, I started with Euromonitor International. I was very new to the business at the time but, looking back, I feel that they provided an excellent introduction to the various stages in the workflow. Entry was pretty straightforward. Send a resume and cover letter, do an online screening test and then attend a phone interview with one of their managers. Look, they've even posted a recruitment ad about a month ago. It looks closed now but that might open up again soon. Alternatively, try e-mailing them directly.

https://www.linkedin.com/jobs/view/market-r...nalSubdomain=my

I think you might have mistaken me for Clare Rewcastle-Brown.

thanks a lot for your info

unfortunately i see their status: no longer accept applications

I'll email and hope for the slightest chance.

how do you pitch for market research projects?
for example, if company A is venturing into this new sector;
- how you do pitch for them in the first place for them to notice you
- what is the usual scope of coverage in terms of content?
- how do you charge? scope of work/time/labour/etc?
- how are you credible? you already have past track records?
- if too big of a project, do you sub it out?
- how do you prevent your work from being plagiarized?

More great questions.

I have never advertised directly on any website so I can't tell you. However, I think non-specific freelance job boards like freelancer.com don't tend to be very good for finding lucrative jobs. I've had a look just to see what's out there and there are a lot of people out there - typically SME start-up owners - searching for freelancers to do some due diligence work for them for $10-15/hour. That's not the market I am looking for, to be honest. Where possible, I try to work with repeat clients or research companies who I'm happy working with and who have a good track record for payment. Last year, I tried doing a lot more pitching to see what else is out there and it ended up being a lot of hours spent with no results to show for it.

About the money question, I've updated the original post to give more clarity.

It depends on how much time you are willing/able to put into it. I have found I can make about 8k-10k per month for what is a part-time gig, i.e. 60-80 hours per month. Your mileage may vary - higher if you have some real specialist skills, lower if you're totally new to the business. I've not tried to go for the 20k per month from this job, so I'm not sure if that will really work. Going to 20k per month means (i) putting in more hours (obviously) and (ii) finding more clients. The second part arises because it's unlikely there is going to be a single client who will have enough capacity to give you 20k per month worth of work.

who to ensure your report is correct? based on the trust between you and your clients?

is your works something like those i read in euromonitor?

what academic background you having?

-edited-

i just knew that you're actually working in euromonitor, i read a lot of reports in euromonitor when i was in uni with access with it. heck, im their 'fans'.
now no longer have chance to read it anymore because dont have so much of money for its subscription fee.

This post has been edited by cHaRsIeWpAu^^: Apr 10 2019, 06:27 PM

gotcha, thanks for the great inside in this field, your logic make sense, the time investment you put into it, gotta be good ROI, else it is not worth the time nor effort, agreed on your point is that, look for the big fish, dont waste time on small fish. lol

so your areas are more on market research, it doesnt matter what field it is in? like for example, property market, new product release, or do you have specific area where you are more incline to work with as that is your specialty?

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

Wow, you got good contact there. Thanks.

Agree with you building panels business isn't easy and the need to applying for iso and esomars.

Btw have another question for you, what is the most annoying question you ever asked a respondent in your careers? Did you ever get scolded for that or punch in the face for asking those questions?

Hi TS. Respect to you .

May I ask some questions to you:

1. How to be self disciplined against distractions and procrastination? You know that work at home sometimes your parents/wife/children will call you while you work?

2. Do you listen music while you are working?

3. How about your space work? Do you have the special decorative room to make you alert when working?

4. Can you give a day in the life of an market research analyst?

5. How many times do you travel in a year?

6. Do you meet your clients face to face ocasionally?

Thank you for your reply

This post has been edited by L.Torreira: Apr 10 2019, 10:16 PM

I suppose then you can sign off with your own name as letterhead. Just curious coz I thought SC or Bursa may have some requirements on who does these IMR for public listings.

saturated industry. Look at freelancer upwork already know.

first sentence say making a living working at home, then say only side gig....so which is which?

Absolutely agree, this is why I have never fully committed to this line of work. In fact, I think it is probably on a long-term decline. I'm lucky to have a few clients that I can work with regularly but I have no idea whether this is something I can do for the rest of my life.

About your second question, it is a side gig in that it takes up 3-4 hours a day of my time. I make a living from doing it because this is 100% of the income I report to LHDN. It's sufficient to pay for expenses and some savings.

good for you. So you only work part-time.

Pitching
As a freelancer and part-timer, cold pitches don't really work for me. Clients would prefer to work with someone they know. It's a brand recognition thing. Would you want to stick your neck out and tell your boss you hired "mesothelium from LYN"? Most of the work I get is repeat business from previous clients. Sometimes, I do a sub-contracting job for someone I already know.

Scope of coverage
At a very high level, what is covered by the Five Forces model and PESTEL framework. Of course, the devil is in the details..

Charge
I charge a flat rate. I do an internal estimate of how long it will take for me to do it, and apply a per-hour cost depending on the job type. It normally works out reasonably well, and I can justify my numbers to a client if they asked for them.

Credibility
I do have a track record built up over years but it depends what the client wants to be done. For industry reports, I can point to 50+ that I have written. I have a few examples of primary market research and other due diligence work to show if that's required.

Subbing out
I wish I could do this! But, no, I haven't built the network of trusted collaborators to whom I can parcel out parts of the work. Neither have I built the infrastructure to monitor them all. More often than not, I am the subcontractor that someone has contacted.

Plagiarism
I'd be a bit flattered if people actually wanted to plagiarise my work. The reports I send out are property of the client and they can do whatever they like with them, including passing copies around to whoever they wish. Normally, since the content is of a confidential nature, the client is particular about making sure they don't get distributed indiscriminately. Actually, they tend to make sure that I am not the one passing it out instead of the other way round.

thanks for the insight
i have done this in the past, as a so called consultant for a new firm
they asked to provide a road-map for their new set up, and a guideline on how to move forward

did it for free, just to build portfolio
in return, the company director will share some profit when applicable, unfortunately that comp not making much

Yup, the economics just doesn't work. The number of new firms that become viable standalone businesses is small enough that you'd probably have to provide "consulting services" for 15-20 companies before finding one that achieves reasonable scale. If each engagement is going to take you 3 months - a reasonable amount of time to provide any "meaningful" insights - you're talking 4-5 years in the hopes of even getting paid out. Can you last that long without getting paid? Do you really want to go down that road?

The way I see it, it's just angel investing except you pay for your shares with sweat rather than cash. It's a rich man's game, makes sense if you allocate 5% of your entire net worth to that sort of thing but not too much more than that.

What u think abt Felda White Paper ?

Would u write abt financial fraud also?

I don't have the financial resources to do that sort of writing. I'm also not that brave. If I get called up by the police about something I wrote and published under my own name, I would honestly shitbrix.

1. I won't lie to you, some days are better than others. To minimise distractions, I find that getting most of the work done in the morning works best. I tried for a while to wake up at 4:30 am and managed to do it for a while but it's really hard. 6:00 am is more likely these days.

2. Most of the time. The type of music depends on what kind of task I'm doing. If it's boring stuff like data entry, I prefer more upbeat music to stay awake. But when I'm in the writing flow, it tends to be something more calming. Classical music like Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Handel feature a lot here. During the evenings, it's something like jazz.

3. Nope, standard blank desk with my PC in front of me. I like my space to be a bit cluttered. Actually, that's not true. That's a nice way of saying I haven't been bothered to tidy up.

4. There isn't much to it. Get up at 6:00 am, out the door by 6:30 for a run until about 7:30, shower and at the desk at 8:00. I try to get at least 2 hours in, sometimes 3. Early lunch around 11:30-12:00 and then work on other things or take care of family issues until about 2:30 pm. Try to get another 1-2 hours in until about 5:30. Early dinner then work on other issues again.

5. If you mean around Malaysia, every 1-2 months. Last trip overseas was to Bangkok (2018) but otherwise haven't travelled out of the country much (been meaning to change this).

6. Yes, I try to meet them at least once in my lifetime. It is hard because most of my clients are not in the country, the majority are in Europe. But if they happen to be in the country, or I happen to be there, I'll take time out to meet them face-to-face.

Listening to this now, in fact.