I was thinking about some of the projects I’ve worked on over the last couple of weeks and one of the common themes was how much clients dislike doing anything on their own sites. Not all mind you, some of them really get it. They embrace the medium and jump right in. On the flip side, there are a number of clients that want you to do everything.

I started thinking back to when I worked for a local ISP in the web department. While I was there I probably completed well over 500 client projects and I’d say 90% of them didn’t want to do anything on their own site. Now, this isn’t difficult to understand. Setting up a CMS, adding images, tweaking settings, doing graphics and general development are out of their area of expertise. No one expects clients to handle that part. That’s why I have a job. But the content? Who knows it better than the client? I certainly don’t know you’re business better than you do. At least I better not! I get the psychology of why some people don’t like it. They might be scared of the technology, they might be used to delegating everything or they just might not care one bit about the web. But in this day and age, really?

So I got to thinking. Some enterprising writer out there could probably make some serious bucks without doing much work. Most of it would be content emailed to you from the client and all you’d have to do is post it. In a CMS. You know, click add, paste, hit submit. Cha ching. Sure, some need content writing services and there’s a market for that. But some of the smaller shops out there just don’t have the time or interest in doing anything other than their work. They just don’t have time, and shooting off a quick email with the content is easier for them than learning Wordpress or some other solution. I can’t say I blame them either.

So I’m thinking someone could probably do a reasonable side business of handling basic updates for clients that are too busy to do it themselves. Add to that actual content writing services and you could probably have all the business you can handle.