Freelance out of your home, with your computer. Surf the world’s databanks. And get paid for it.
Sound great? There are people–called data brokers–who do it. And while it may take a special sort of person to make a living at it, in this age of outsourcing, the downsizing of corporate research departments and libraries means there’s room for newcomers.
One source (The Burwell World Directory of Information Brokers at www.burwellinc.com) lists 1,800 practitioners–only 13 of them in Chicago.
A typical project involves the profile of a corporation or the examination of an industry trend, and the depth that the client wants can vary tremendously.
Ad agencies want support for marketing claims. Lawyers want facts to back up their lawsuits. Exporters want to know about the business climates in other countries. Engineers and chemists want technical details. And Bruce Tincknell, head of Just The Facts Inc., an eight-person information brokering firm in Mount Prospect, was once paid to find the names of the witches in Shakespeare’s “Macbeth,” to settle a bet.
But there’s one problem: If what you really want to do is stay home and juggle data, you’ll sink without a trace. Because database surfing is the least of it. “People fail through lack of marketing and salesmanship,” noted Tincknell. “Many who get into it are research-oriented, but they are not as extroverted as they need to be to get out there and sell themselves and their service.”
“It’s a real tough business to break into,” said Dick Combs, head of Richard Combs Associates, a Chicago information brokerage with four people. “It is extremely cost-driven, and customers have to have a high level of trust in your capabilities. And most people have a deep-seated feeling that information should be free, so it’s difficult to charge for it. I have been at this since 1983 and have seen a lot of people come and go.”
Specializing is a big part of the necessary marketing, noted Sue Rugge of Oakland, Calif., co-author of McGraw-Hill’s Information Broker’s Handbook. “If you are talking to lawyers, engineers, doctors, or real estate agents, their needs are different and the resources are different. You can’t just market to the world–you’ll be spread too thin and have no referral base. You can’t stay home, and you don’t want to do cold-calling, so you need to go to conventions where your clients are.”
As for what you can offer the clients, there are indeed mind-boggling amounts of information out there–more than 5,000 commercial databases, says Alfred Glossbrenner of Morrisville, Pa., the other co-author of the Information Broker’s Handbook. Want corporate reports? Blood lines of thoroughbred race horses? It’s out there–for fees ranging from 50 cents to $1.50 or more a minute for searching, and often extra bucks for each report you access. Plus you have to pay the up-front subscription fee for the service that carries the database, and you have to learn the syntax of that database.
A typical search costs about $75–if you know what you’re doing, Glossbrenner noted. And notice there’s no mention above of the Internet. Yes, what’s there is free–and usually worth every penny, brokers agreed. Web browsing may be a good warm-up, but the commercial databases have more in-depth, reliable material, with better indexing.
Meanwhile, as much as half the research is not done on-line at all, but by talking to live people, by phone, usually industry analysts or corporate executives. Yes, you just cold-call up someone who might know something, and talk to them. No money changes hands.
“There are times when they will not talk, but many people are interested in sharing their knowledge, and often want to know what we have already learned, so we share,” shared Tincknell, freely, when called.
“We typically start with the Web, since there is so much out there and we would feel bad to have paid for something that could have been found free,” explained Combs. “Then we search databases until we are satisfied we have found whatever is out there. Then we talk to people to fill the project in–analysts, people in the target company, or in peer companies, or customers.”
And when it comes to delivering the product, your client may be as interested in the output of your brain as the output of your modem. “The customers often want analysis,” Tincknell noted. “Just handing over a stack of articles is called `rip and ship,’ and there is less and less demand for that. The more successful brokers know they have to add value to their product. If you don’t have a business, marketing or research background to base your analysis on, it will be a pitfall for you.”
And analysis may have to come before anything else, because the clients typically aren’t sure themselves what they need, and the broker has to draw them out, and then reply with a research project proposal with a blanket fee, he added. Yes, it’s daunting.
Rugge (who founded the first successful information brokerage, Information on Demand, in 1979, selling out to British press magnate Robert Maxwell in 1982) used to give seminars to people on becoming a data broker. She estimated that only 15 percent of those who took the seminars got launched successfully.
Three-fourths decided it was not for them, she said. But Tincknell and Combs agreed that business is good–even corporate clients that were infatuated with the promise of the Web have seen it can be a tremendous time-sink and are willing to pay specialists to do the searching. And Rugge said that the onus of marketing has eased lately with the spread of subcontracting, as dealmakers pass the actual search work over to specialists.
If you’re interested, check out the Web site of the Association of Independent Information Professionals (www.aiip.org), the Information Professionals Institute (with the Burwell Directory at www.burwellinc.com) and the Society of Competitive Intelligence Professionals (www.scip.org.)
