Hit Subscribe Freelancer Q&A

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Another podcast taking on ideas for services niche. In this installment, I look at the idea of creating automation systems to spare enterprise developers and/or quality assurance folks from toil.
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Link Picks
Jim Collins' classic business framework for what separates truly great companies from merely good ones is explored in this breakdown of *Good to Great* by Unusual Ventures.
Enterprise automation and RPA are two distinct approaches to streamlining business processes, and this piece breaks down their key differences to help organizations choose the right strategy.
Test environment automation for DevOps explores how automating the provisioning and management of test environments can streamline DevOps pipelines and improve release reliability.
If you're new to the concept, what is agentic testing provides a practical introduction to autonomous software testing.

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"Info products" are things like podcast courses or eBooks that anyone with an internet connection can create and sell pretty easily. Can you make a living selling these types of products to software engineers?
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Link Picks
Managing low census periods in home health can be challenging for agencies, and this resource explores strategies to help maintain staff productivity and agency stability when patient volume drops.
Building a strong personal brand as a C-suite executive can help establish your authority, expand your influence, and open doors to new professional opportunities.
Getting started with Go and InfluxDB walks through how to connect to and interact with InfluxDB using the Go programming language.
If you've accidentally deleted important contacts from your Google account, this guide on Google Contacts recovery walks you through the steps to restore them.

This one hits close to home for me.  A reader/viewer wondered if helping companies make strategic decisions about codebases is a good niche, and I can answer this because it was once kind of my niche. 
 
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Picks:
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Unusual VC shared advice on how do you work with design partners?, with a StackRox co-founder's take on setting expectations and getting honest feedback during early product development.
Workato introduced Workato Enterprise MCP, letting existing API integrations be reused as agent-callable tools for LLMs like Claude.
Tricentis shows how ai test automation tools help enterprise teams automate testing, improve quality, and reduce release risk with AI-powered quality engineering.
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These podcasts are courtesy of Hit Subscribe, a content agency whose authors are all techies: https://www.hitsubscribe.com/ 

As a freelancer and service provider, you'll likely offer value during your sales and onboarding process.  But when should you stop?  When should you charge for things to show your clients that your work is valuable?
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Picks:-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Careflow published a piece on patient referral leakage, covering what causes skilled nursing facilities to lose potential residents and how to reduce it.
CSuite Content put out a guide on how to measure thought leadership, covering quantitative and qualitative metrics like engagement, trust, and business outcomes.
Enov8 broke down devsecops vs cybersecurity, explaining how the two overlap and where DevSecOps fits specifically within the software development lifecycle.
InfluxData updated their glossary entry on What is a Data Historian, looking at where traditional historians still hold up and where modern time series databases now do the job better.
Spin.AI has a Google Workspace™ Backup Solution For Businesses, covering automated backups and recovery for Gmail, Drive, Calendar, and more.
These podcasts are courtesy of Hit Subscribe, a content agency whose authors are all techies: https://www.hitsubscribe.com/  

Long ago, when I was blogging more regularly about identifying niches, a reader asked me how I found mine. While I don't do a ton of exposition content, I thought this topic might be interesting for viewers.
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Links of the week:
Spin.AI published a breakdown of the best SSPM solutions for Google Workspace, worth a look alongside their Google Workspace backup and recovery offering.
Unusual VC has a useful piece on accelerating your content flywheel.
Workato covered the top Marketo integrations worth knowing about.
Wrangle shared a collection of help desk ticket response templates for support teams.
Tricentis put out a practical guide on how to speed up Oracle deployments.

If you're offering services as a freelancer, does it make sense to unbundle strategy from labor? This episode digs into that question.
This podcast is courtesy of Hit Subscribe. Prefer to watch the video version of this podcast? View this podcast as a video, here!
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Links of the week:
Careflow published a guide to patient referral leakage and how to reduce it.
CSuite Content took a look at the leadership brand behind Partake Brewing's Ted Fleming.
Enov8 broke down the differences between data mesh vs data lake architectures.
InfluxData published a practical guide to using D3.js with React.

If you have a single big client, engaging your services for an unspecified amount of time, it can be easy to fall into an employee-employer style relationship. How can you avoid that?
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Picks:--------------------------------------------------------------------------
CSuite Content published a guide to brand strategy consulting firms and how to choose the right partner.
Enov8 shared a post explaining Duck Creek data masking and why it matters for insurance platforms.
InfluxData added a glossary entry breaking down database indexing and how it improves query performance.
Unusual VC published a piece on AI in software development and what it means for startups.
Careflow recently covered the patient intake process and how healthcare teams can improve efficiency.
Tricentis, who makes testing tools, published a guide to quality management.
Workato published an ultimate guide to optimizing NPS and improving customer feedback workflows.
Autify shared a primer on AI test case generation and how AI can speed up software testing.
Spin.AI published a guide to Google Workspace backup and recovery.

For a while, I was getting a lot of questions about whether something would be a good niche for indies. In this video, I answer the question of whether improving code performance is a good niche.
Join us to learn more.
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Links of the week:
CSuite Content published an introduction to personal PR and managing your personal brand.
Enov8 has a new guide to GCP data masking.
InfluxData added a glossary entry explaining overall equipment effectiveness (OEE).
Unusual VC published a piece on AI in software development and what it means for startups.
Careflow recently covered patient intake management software on their blog.
Tricentis, who makes testing tools, put out an introduction to AI test automation.
Workato shared a guide to logistics automation.
Autify published a primer on AI quality assurance.
Spin.AI broke down the differences between CASB vs SSPM

You may hear the terms "niche" and "positioning" tossed around a lot, often interchangeably. What do these really mean, and what's the difference?
Join us to learn more.
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Links of the week:
CSuite Content just shared a guide to enterprise reputation management.
Enov8 has a new checklist for DLP.
InfluxData recently updated a node red dashboard tutorial for 2026.
Unusual VC has an interesting explainer of how startups can pivot.
Careflow started publishing to their blow recently, including a post about longitudinal health records (and why they don't work).
Tricentis, provider of software testing tools, updated their offering around data integrity testing.

Maybe you're currently employed or between jobs. But it occurs to you that you want to go off on your own and start consulting (as opposed to freelancing with labor services). How do you do that?
Join us to learn more.
View this podcast as a video on YouTube.
Links of the week:
CSuite Content has a practical guide to executive bios for business leaders.
Enov8 shared a clear explainer on Oracle ERP data masking.
InfluxData put together a getting-started guide to in-memory databases.
Unusual VC explored how AI is changing software development.
Careflow is a referral management platform for healthcare organizations.
Tricentis explains AI Quality Assurance for modern testing teams.