GoodSoundClub - Romy the Cat's Audio Site

In the Forum: Playback Listening
In the Thread: How to make money in Audio

Post Subject: Audio house calls and full-range MelqsPosted by JJ Triode on: 3/26/2012

Romy,

I have thought about what you might do to create some audio cash flow and two things came to mind.

1. Audio doctor house calls. This would not mainly be to "audio people," as their goals and frustrations would usually not be what you would be willing to help with. However, there are a certain number of affluent "non-audio people" who nevertheless ended up with fairly expensive audio installations that they have trouble with. In some cases such people have equipment that is objectively not working right, e.g. blown tweeters, grounding problems or other straightforward things that they don't know how to address (or don't have time or energy for.) In other cases the "expert installers" from their dealers have made a mess of things, or there are acoustic problems in the room and nobody with common sense there to sort it out. Sometimes these clients just need someone to help them figure out how to use it all, I mean literally like putting batteries in the remote or whatever. Sticking to a few wealthy customers (in preference to an army of bottom-feeders) I'd think you could get, say, 4-6 engagements per year, amounting to a couple hours to a couple days of work per gig, and paying a couple hundred to a couple thousand $/gig.

2. Offer to build and sell the full-range Melquiades by custom order. I know you have various reasons to put the Melq in the public domain and not build it for money, but you could leave the "plans" here on GSC and still sell maybe 2-3 pairs a year to people who want it and are not prepared to build it. There are reasons not to do it, but there are reasons not to do anything in audio for money. I think you did sell that one mirror-imaged pair, and it was not the end of the world.

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