After getting home from Linuxfest Northwest, I found that I had a lot of decompressing to do. After all, it was Sunday, and Monday was just around the corner. But I must admit that if there is one thing that will keep bringing me back year after year, it has to be the wealth of education that is put at our disposal by those who present each year.

During his presentation, John Locke expressed the importance of making sure you fully understand two very important things regarding potential customers: they generally don’t care about software licensing, and they simply need everything to work with as little cost as possible. Based on this foundation of understanding, John then clearly outlined, step-by-step, how to get this done.

Breaking it down:

What do potential clients need? One of the common myths regarding working with Open Source products as part of a consulting business is that no one could possibly need the products that you have experience in. This is simply untrue. Most businesses have payroll, keeping costs down, and avoiding software compatibility issues as software vendors come and go, just to name a few of their needs.

Basically, by establishing your value early on as a full service “shop,” you automatically outperform the endeavors of other specific vendors and representatives are much more specialized and, oftentimes, more costly with their proprietary alternatives.

Finding clients, spotting trends, and establishing a fix to a specific need. One of the common misconceptions is that the key to a successful Open Source consulting firm is merely to locate clients, push some Open Source apps down their throats, and be done with it. The fact is that this is not accurate at all. Being successful here means learning to network, spotting and offering to solve shortcomings, giving back to what Locke calls the “business ecosystem,” and of course, grasping the concept of how this business is best when considering the long tail benefit.

To be brief, understanding the value of the long tail basically can be summarized as follows: Not everything is going to reach the needs of a large market. The long tail demonstrates that your varied efforts could, indeed, only be reaching a limited number of people. Even so, you will still be compensated for your time and sleep well knowing that you are providing a valued service.

As for this “business ecosystem,” the easiest way to look at this is to understand that for every action, there is an equal and, oftentimes, environment-changing reaction. To compensate for this and to better serve your own clients in the future, it is worth considering giving back to the Open Source projects that allow you to run your own Open Source business. A little effort from many motivated people can produce fantastic results.

Closing thoughts. Obviously, there is not enough time to express every single point that I learned while attending the presentation. And even though some people may say that this kind of stuff may be deemed obvious, to those who are not already working in this field but happen to use the products, this type of instruction can prove to be invaluable for those not in the know.

This article has been republished with the kind permission of our friends at Mad Penguin. For more news about the Open Source community, go give ‘em a look or Subscribe to Mad Penguin’s RSS Feed!

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[tags]Linux, Open Source, money from Open Source, capitalizing on Open Source, Linuxfest[/tags]