What do you Charge For Consulting?

Here’s another question I’m often asked:

How much do you charge for consulting? What will it cost for any SEO work you do for me or any scripts you write?

The answer to this, as it should be for you as well, is that it depends!

First, you need to identify what your core competencies are. What are you skilled in? What do you suck at? What are you doing ok in but could use improvement?

The second thing you’ll need to note is how much you’re currently making from your daily activities. Is the income residual (recurring income is best) or is it something that you need to continually do over and over.

Note: If you have to keep doing it over and over, chances are you’ve got a job just like working for the man but in this case the ‘man’ is yourself

Anyhow, at some point you’re going to come up with a value to attach to what your time is worth. Whether that’s $20 an hour or $200 an hour (yes, I charge that much for consulting at times) you should consider the following things before you ever give a price quote:

1. Is it fun? Yeah, yeah, yeah - I hear you snickering right now. But let’s be honest - ok? If you don’t enjoy working on a project, why do it? Sure, if you really need the money go ahead and do it but charge accordingly.
2. Are you skilled in this topic? There are two cores of thought here. The first is that if you’re skilled in a topic you should charge less because it will take you less time to do the topic. On the other hand, some people will charge more because they’re an expert. it reminds me of the story where a plumber goes to a guys house, does some work and gives the owner a bill. On the bill it says something like this: “Cost of bolt to fix the problem - $1.00″ - “Knowing where to look and place the bolt - $200″.
3. Is there ongoing value? In other words, will you be able to reuse the script or ebook or whatever that you’re hiring your services out for? If you can’t reuse it and it is considered ‘work for hire’ then you are simply trading time for money. In that case, I’d charge more. On the other hand, if you can reselll the script then you have a client that will pay you for the script in addition to you being able to market it later down the road for no additional development costs. In some cases, this can be a huge determining factor in the price!
4. Time requirements - Look, if a project is going to take 6 months of your time to take care of then it’s going to command a higher price. Think of it as you giving away a part of your life that you’ll never get back. On the other hand, if you’re only going to spend a little bit of time on the project, maybe you can lower your hourly rate.
5. What are you currently doing? If you have a lot of projects that you’re already working on and someone really wants you to finish theirs, there is a cost to that. Especially if you need to move it ahead of other projects.
6. Is it a rush job? I really try to avoid rush jobs. Why? Well, a rush job simply says to me “Hi, I’d like to pay for your services but I didn’t spend the time necessary to find out what I needed in advance”. Quite often, it’s those types of clients that are the most time consuming and annoying. That’s not always the case but it has happened enough in the past that I’m cautious about rush jobs. At any rate, if you’re going to take a rush job - make sure you charge appropriately. It’s typically going to cut into your leisure time and you don’t want to miss out on too much of that.

Anyhow, those are just a few of the things that I consider when I’m putting out a bid on a project. It certainly helps if you’re in the position where you don’t need a project to live on. You can charge whatever you feel like and if the client doesn’t accept - no big deal.

As they used to say when I was in network marketing with Quorum (now defunct and my god did I really sell security products???) SWSWSWSW - as in - Some Will, Some Won’t, So What, Someone’s Waiting.

Do you have any other things you consider when you bid on a project?

G-Man