I have to do a lot of this stuff: backups, disaster recovery, security, monitoring, alerting, configuration management, documentation. I'm mediocre to bad. I'd

I have to do a lot of this stuff: backups, disaster recovery, security, monitoring, alerting, configuration management, documentation. I'm mediocre to bad. I'd love to pay someone competent to do it. Pricing: What I really want to pay for is service and training. We are on a Dreamhost VPS right now. It's fine for our needs and I can manage it ok, but I've come across different problems that I wish there was a guru around to show me how to solve it. I've spent a ton of time with different problems, some that I've been able to solve, others that I haven't. I'd be happy to pay for someone to walk me through how to do it. The best pricing model (for me) would be a system that is configured by you initially, after you talk with me. You spend X hours creating policies for me (i.e. written documentation). You charge me a one-time fee for the consultation, set-up, and documentation. We keep you on retainer for some monthly fee but all other service/training is on a per-job basis. It might be a little odd that I'd pay you for training; you'd be essentially working yourself out of a job. But I think that could justify a higher rate. It would also prevent people from abusing you to do things that they should be able to do themselves... OR they would rather pay you at your high rate to move files around. Win-win. There are a lot of people that don't care to learn about this stuff, so maybe you would have a different tiered pricing for that type of service. What you /shouldn't/ offer is an actual hosting setup. I know there are some tricky questions regarding how you can get access to the system if you don't host it (you'll have to come up with a reasonable policy) but the hosting market is quite saturated (I think). It'd be difficult for you to offer a differentiated product since most people look at hosting as a commodity. I think your product differentiator will come to service and training. Contact me if you pursue this. We'd be really interested.