24,302 postings at a $24 hour, and three skills that pay $33 to $35

The skill market this week

1. Management Consulting & Analysis

• 3 days. Pick the one decision your day job taught you to make well. Write a two-page brief on a real company in that space, with one recommendation and the numbers behind it. Learn the names buyers search for: market entry analysis, pricing teardown, operations diagnostic, go-to-market plan.
• 4 weeks. Build three more briefs you can show publicly, and write a one-page scoping questionnaire so a first call ends with a price.
• 12 weeks. Win two paid engagements, one at $35 an hour or above. Turn your best brief into a fixed-price diagnostic you can repeat in two weeks. Move one client onto a retainer.

I will write you a clear decision brief on one business question

Most owners already know their problem. They need someone outside the business to size it, price it, and put the options on one page.

Here is what I do. You give me one decision — a price change, a new market, a supplier switch, a process that keeps breaking — and I give you a written brief in five working days. The brief covers what the numbers say, the realistic options, what each one costs you, and which one I would take if it were my business. You get a PDF and a 45-minute call to walk through it.

What I need from you to start: the question in one paragraph, whatever data you already have (a spreadsheet, an export, last year's invoices — messy is fine), and 30 minutes on a call.

What I will not do: promise a number I cannot support, or tell you what you want to hear. If your data will not answer the question, the brief says so and says what would.

Who this suits: businesses between roughly $200k and $10m in revenue, and founders deciding something expensive who want a second read before they commit.

Typical turnaround is five working days, with 48-hour rush available for a fee. Two rounds of comments are included; further rounds are billed hourly.

I have run this work inside operating businesses, so the brief is written in the language your team already uses.

Message me with your question before ordering, so I can tell you honestly whether it is the kind of problem I can help with.

2. Database Management & Administration

• 3 days. Install PostgreSQL locally and restore a sample database. Run EXPLAIN ANALYZE on two slow queries, add one index, and watch the plan change. That single loop is most of the job.
• 4 weeks. Learn backups and restores by doing them: dump a database, restore it to a fresh instance, and time it. Add roles and permissions, connection pooling, and one migration rehearsed on a copy.
• 12 weeks. Tune a table with production-sized data, document a backup and restore procedure another person could follow at 3am, and deliver one paid health check.

I will audit your PostgreSQL or MySQL database and fix the slow parts

Your app got slow, or your backups never got tested, and nobody on the team owns the database. I do.

Three packages, all fixed price, all delivered with a written report.

Health check — $300. I look at your schema, indexes, slowest queries, backup setup and connection configuration. You get a five-page report: what is fine, what is a risk, and the changes I would make, in priority order. Nothing is changed in your database in this package.

Tuning and fixes — from $1,500. Everything in the health check, plus I make the changes on a copy, test them, and apply them in an agreed maintenance window. That usually means adding missing indexes, rewriting the worst queries, fixing the connection pool, and documenting the backup and restore procedure so the next person can follow it.

Monthly care — from $600 a month. Backup verification, index and disk-growth monitoring, and a guaranteed response on restore requests. For teams that want someone accountable rather than a ticket queue.

What I need to start: read access to a copy of the database, the schema, and one slow query.

What I will not do: work directly on a production database with no tested backup, or take credentials before we have agreed a scope in writing.

I work with PostgreSQL, MySQL and SQL Server, on Linux and on managed cloud instances. The report is in plain English. Message me with your engine, your size and your symptom before ordering.

3. Data Analysis & Testing

• 3 days. Write SQL joins, filters and aggregates without looking them up. Clean one messy public dataset end to end and write five sentences on what it shows. Those two things cover most first jobs.
• 4 weeks. Build a ten-line briefing habit: question, data, method, finding, caveat. Rebuild one report as a dashboard a non-analyst can refresh.
• 12 weeks. Deliver two paid analyses, one on a dataset you have never seen. Turn your best one into a repeatable template. Move a recurring question onto a monthly arrangement.

I will answer one business question from your own data, in a written analysis

You have data and a decision to make. I turn the first into a one-page answer for the second.

Bring me a question — is this price working, which customers actually renew, did the campaign do anything — and the data you already have: exports, spreadsheets, a database, a folder of CSVs. I clean it, check what it can and cannot support, run the analysis, and write it up. You get the working file, a short written answer with the numbers behind it, and a call to go through it.

Single question — $250. One question, one dataset, five working days. Written answer, charts and the working notebook.

Dashboard — from $900. A recurring question turned into a report you can refresh yourself, built in Power BI, Looker Studio, or a spreadsheet if that is what your team will actually open. Includes a walkthrough session and written documentation.

Monthly analysis — from $800 a month. One analysis a month, plus a standing call to review what the numbers are doing.

What I need from you to start: your question in writing, and the data or access to it.

What I will not do: hand you a chart with no answer, or pretend a sample of forty rows can support a claim about your whole market.

I work in SQL, Python and spreadsheets, and I write for people who do not read statistics. If your data cannot answer the question, the write-up says so.

Message me with your question before ordering.

How to choose