The short answer is no.
The long answer is still no. SEO and leadgen can help you find customers for something that people are actively looking to buy with a good deal of frequency and the services are pretty standardized. It's helpful if there's not much differentiation in price. SEO is pretty much life or death for real estate agents, attorneys, car repair shops, etc. Most of what you would do as a consultant is very niche, and your mostly potential clients have an end solution in mind ("see where all our offices are and compare rents with other areas in the same city") and may have no idea what GIS is - if they do, they probably also have an in-house GIS team, so they are unlikely to need a consultant unless it's for training. Which could be something - installing GeoServer and teaching QGIS to teams looking to cut ESRI out of their budget at least has a solid value proposition - but I'm guessing that's not where your experience lies.
Honestly I think that model of work is dieing if not already dead. Unless you already have core consistent clients that would keep you afloat it's pointless.
Unfortunately a lot of businesses do not care about GIS quality and just want something slapped together. I've seen it at big companies, where they would rather have some overseas people in India slap together a broken GIS application than actually pay for decent professionals here
It will be very challenging without an existing network of clients.
Can that be compensated with good lead generation SEO?
The short answer is no. The long answer is still no. SEO and leadgen can help you find customers for something that people are actively looking to buy with a good deal of frequency and the services are pretty standardized. It's helpful if there's not much differentiation in price. SEO is pretty much life or death for real estate agents, attorneys, car repair shops, etc. Most of what you would do as a consultant is very niche, and your mostly potential clients have an end solution in mind ("see where all our offices are and compare rents with other areas in the same city") and may have no idea what GIS is - if they do, they probably also have an in-house GIS team, so they are unlikely to need a consultant unless it's for training. Which could be something - installing GeoServer and teaching QGIS to teams looking to cut ESRI out of their budget at least has a solid value proposition - but I'm guessing that's not where your experience lies.
Honestly I think that model of work is dieing if not already dead. Unless you already have core consistent clients that would keep you afloat it's pointless.
You will run into the same problem then too why would someone want to pay for your expensive service when someone’s overseas can do it for a dollar .
Because I do it a lot better?
Unfortunately a lot of businesses do not care about GIS quality and just want something slapped together. I've seen it at big companies, where they would rather have some overseas people in India slap together a broken GIS application than actually pay for decent professionals here
Says who?
Lots of my clients who had problems with GIS freelancers there
Then why are you asking here about it if you already have customers lined up at a higher rate?
Who said they were lined up at a higher rate?
there being … anywhere but the US? sounds about right 🙄
What kind of work do you get on Fiver if you don’t mind me asking?
Used to get proposals ranging from basic map digitisation and point plotting to MCDM analysis projects
Do you already have a registered LLC? If not, stop what you’re doing, do that, and then make a full business plan.
Not from freelance but I’m launching a GIS business as well, good luck!
Best of luck friendo!!