It might be a lot quicker to find your model through cost exploration.

  1. Put up a landing page that talks about your service, and has a 'buy now' link at the bottom

  2. The 'buy now' price should be a price that you think is fair

  3. Clone that page and play with prices. One page could be priced half of what you thought was fair. Another page might be double. 

  4. Load balance those pages. If you see an even amount of people willing to pay $100 as $20, then you KNOW $20 is priced too low. Your optimal price point is after the point you start losing customers. If you can sell it for $500 to 10 customers or $50 to 100 customers, you will have made the same amount of gross revenue, but it is much easier to deliver service to 10 customers than 100 customers. 

Your best price point may be 10 times (or more) what you think is fair. It may be 10 times less. If more, well then you have opportunities for establishing an agency, as there's overhead to delegate the work and still make profit. Or you can discount it to those who need some help. Or you can play with different cost models (e.g., "I will get you hired in exchange for 10% of your first 10 paychecks" type of arrangements).

> That's my problem with recruiters. They get paid to place "someone", not "you".

That sounds good as a sales pitch for your service but I don't think it's accurate.

While true that recruiters get paid by the employer to place the right candidate, reputable recruiters generally do not submit multiple candidates for the same position at the same time. In other words, the recruiter is working to place you if you look like the best candidate.

If a recruiter "spams" their customer (the employer) with unqualified candidates their customers will stop using them. Employers who use recruiters expect the recruiter to screen and qualify applicants, separate the wheat from the chaff, then put their best candidate forward. Good recruiters will bypass the application and HR steps and get their candidate in front of the hiring manager. That's why employers use recruiters -- they're outsourcing the resume scanning and initial screening process.

People who have had bad experiences with recruiters often blame the recruiter and that whole industry when they should reflect on their own shortcomings. If multiple recruiters aren't putting a candidate into interviews that may indicate the recruiters are incompetent or that whole industry is parasitical and useless, or it could indicate that the candidate is not attractive or competitive for the available positions. I think it's obvious that recruiters will focus their efforts on the best candidates they can find because those people will most likely result in a successful placement. That's the only way recruiters get paid. They don't make any money submitting applications for candidates who don't stand out or get through a phone screen, or who can't write a competent resume tailored to the job. We have job coaches and counselors for that.

The more I think about it the more I agree that what I said isn't accurate, actually. Agents can spam too and get paid for placing "someone", not one person. Also, if everyone had an agent, we're basically at the same place. So I don't think this is the solution.

Also I generally agree with what you're saying about recruiters. Still trying to think of solutions. The problem needing to be solved is it's very hard for lots of engineers at various points in time to find work. It's a real problem because of how it affects those people in that situation.

I didn't see the problem until I decided to quit my job this year, at the height of the layoffs. I used to be able to get offers for every one out of three interviews.

That isn't the case anymore. At all. Farrrr from it.

There IS indeed a problem but I don't think the solution is becoming an agent. I'm still going to keep it open to get more inspiration and testing.

I understand in some sense that the job market really tightened up. I've survived a few downturns in my long programming career (40 years now). I have a son facing a terrible job market. By "in some sense" I mean that senior people with lots of experience and professional contacts aren't having the same problems finding jobs.

Recruiters and agents will only take on candidates they believe they can place. If they can't put a candidate (or freelancer) into a job quickly they lose money. That means recruiters will focus their efforts on the highest-quality candidates they can find (which individual candidates will perceive as "ghosting"), and agents will only represent people they can consistently keep busy. Analogously, Hollywood and sports agents don't represent everyone who wants to act or play basketball, they represent people who already have careers, and a few people who look very likely to succeed.

In this market that means, unfortunately, that people with less experience and fewer marketable skills, fewer professional contacts, will struggle to get jobs. And those same junior people got laid off at higher rates. That increases competition for fewer jobs (for the time being, anyway, mainly because of interest rates), which will affect both the juniors and the people a little farther along who have to compete with a large number of less senior people looking for jobs who may cost less.

Disclaimer: 10X Management, an agency for tech freelancers, represents me. My opinions, not theirs.