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How I went from $100-an-hour programming to $X0,000-a-week consulting

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Re: How I went from $100-an-hour programming to $X0,000-a-week consulting

#51

Post by elmuchoprez »

Jach wrote: post #33
elmuchoprez wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I consistently meet people who earn > 200 $ / hour, without much programming experience (but know an open source project of interest very well). I see this quite a bit as well. People can "luck into" something that gets hot and ride that wave into decent money in the short term. But a decent programming background is what keeps that ship floating because you always have to stay on top of the next thing if you want to…

On the other hand, if you can pull in $200/hr consistently (i.e. your yearly income isn't far from $400k before taxes) for at least half a decade, you can save up enough to retire early with a modest standard of living. But as has been said, consistency is harder for these things. What open source projects have you seen people make good chunks of change from just knowing how to work them? http://www.pentaho.com/ is o…

Well, I would take some issue with the idea that a typical $200/hour consultant is billing $200/hour for 40 hours a week and taking that much home (taxes not withstanding). A lot of time gets eaten up in client relations, contract negotiations, skill development, etc... none of which is typically billed for. I've seen agency types bill $200 or higher an hour and log 2000+ hours in a year, but the agency is taking a huge chunk of that money.

For me, Magento (e-commerce) is the open source system that I lucked into. I got involved with it about 4 yeas ago which gives me a significant jump on the majority of devs I encounter. Besides being slightly ahead of the game, Magento has a reasonable learning curve that scares off a lot of the wordpress-eque devs and lots of more competent devs seem to thumb their nose at e-commerce, so the market isn't flooding.

Re: How I went from $100-an-hour programming to $X0,000-a-week consulting

#52

Post by tomjen3 »

SageRaven wrote: post #24

Damn, that sounds nice. I wonder if system admin/architecture can be modeled that way. I'd love to bill even a modest $2k/week, rather than trawl craigslist, responding to posts for "unix/linux ninjas" then having shops balk at anything over $20 an hour. I don't know how many messes I've cleaned up (likely left by people charging a hell of a lot more than me) for really low rates. I know, I know. Craiglist and other…

Have you considered remote classes on how to prevent the messes you have been called in to clean up?

Or even specialize in when shit hits the fan? I mean the advice to startups are always 'find a customer with their hair on fire'.

Re: How I went from $100-an-hour programming to $X0,000-a-week consulting

#53

Post by thirdtruck »

Jach wrote: post #28
girasquid wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- Start a blog - Start going to meetups and make friends (no meetups? Organize one!)

"So what if I hate people and don't want to make friends?" (You tolerate it and with civility it's easy to make acquaintances!)

And no small part of that negative sentiment, at least for some of the population, seems to stem from the same "growing pains" that accompany the early steps of any skill set.

Socializing can turn into an enjoyable activity over time, just like how a multiplayer game turns fun once you get past the newbie mistakes.

Re: How I went from $100-an-hour programming to $X0,000-a-week consulting

#54

Post by bdunn »

sown wrote: post #11

So what do I do if I don't have a blog or any real friends to refer me? I don't know anyone at all here in SV and no one seems to want me anyways. On the flip side, I suppose that there are people that could use me but they don't know how to find consultants. The only time this has happened was when a potential employer and I didn't quite work so they let me name a price for the time I worked and they paid (rare in c…

Take a listen to the podcast Patrick mentions in the P.S. Eric and I have had a lot of success in offering free seminars to local business leaders (e.g., "How to find customers online"), and use the opportunity to also create a networking mixer - centered around you, where people are talking about you and what you had to say afterward.

It's one of the easiest ways to build credibility and a pool of clients (direct or sources of referrals) I've come across.

Re: How I went from $100-an-hour programming to $X0,000-a-week consulting

#55

Post by pknerd »

patio11 wrote: post #18
sown wrote: post #11

So what do I do if I don't have a blog or any real friends to refer me? I don't know anyone at all here in SV and no one seems to want me anyways. On the flip side, I suppose that there are people that could use me but they don't know how to find consultants. The only time this has happened was when a potential employer and I didn't quite work so they let me name a price for the time I worked and they paid (rare in c…

Get a blog and start making new business acquaintances. (Being in the Valley should not exactly have you hurting for options on that score.)

And what about those who not even in US and belong to a "3rd world country" where one wish to give work only because it's Cheap?

Re: How I went from $100-an-hour programming to $X0,000-a-week consulting

#56

Post by zem »

SageRaven wrote: post #24

Damn, that sounds nice. I wonder if system admin/architecture can be modeled that way. I'd love to bill even a modest $2k/week, rather than trawl craigslist, responding to posts for "unix/linux ninjas" then having shops balk at anything over $20 an hour. I don't know how many messes I've cleaned up (likely left by people charging a hell of a lot more than me) for really low rates. I know, I know. Craiglist and other…

as a first step, you could try patrick's advice of charging the same rate, but billing by the week (and of course speccing out the work in weekly chunks)

Re: How I went from $100-an-hour programming to $X0,000-a-week consulting

#57

Post by bdunn »

enjo wrote: post #13
patio11 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In broad strokes, make businesses money. In a little more detail, I (personally) work mostly for B2B SaaS businesses and know a few things which tend to work for generating incremental growth in revenue. If you've followed my blog or HN posts they won't sound all that impressively new: write drip email campaigns, do A/B yet, redo pricing tiers, optimize conversion funnels, etc etc. There are many other consulting spe…

Just to be clear: This is different than "freelancing" or "contract development". This is more traditional business consulting. You're going in and changing processes and structures more than anything else. It might be around a specific goal like "make our signups more effective", but you're not just writing some code. You are going in an helping them to change their mindset by incorporating feedback (A/B testing) an…

I've received MANY reader success stories from people who have simply adjusted their messaging from "I will write code for you" to "I will help you be more profitable (...as a result of writing the right code)." As far as I know, none of these successes pitched prior success with big businesses or their diploma.

This change in messaging lowers the risk factor between you and a potential client (throwing money at a coder doesn't always equate to business success), which in turn allows you to drive up your rates.

Re: How I went from $100-an-hour programming to $X0,000-a-week consulting

#58

Post by SwellJoe »

SageRaven wrote: post #24

Damn, that sounds nice. I wonder if system admin/architecture can be modeled that way. I'd love to bill even a modest $2k/week, rather than trawl craigslist, responding to posts for "unix/linux ninjas" then having shops balk at anything over $20 an hour. I don't know how many messes I've cleaned up (likely left by people charging a hell of a lot more than me) for really low rates. I know, I know. Craiglist and other…

It's cheesy, but "build your brand" is relevant to your situation. When a customer comes to you, rather than you going to them, and they've come to you because of something specific and awesome you've done or written, you can set your price and the customer will not balk.

Many years ago, I did consulting at $125/hour, but if I was going on-site (particular in another city), I'd bill by the day, at $1000/day (often putting in 10 hours a day, so $100/hour) with some sort of minimum in place, so I wouldn't drive or fly somewhere to only be needed for one day. The reason I could charge what I did was because I did some stuff that led to me being well-known. I wrote a book; it didn't sell very well, or pay me much, but when you say, "I wrote a book about system administration, published by No Starch Press" it raises you to the tier of people that can charge $125/hour without hesitation.

Also, when you have a long-running consultancy that specializes in one niche (mine was web caching, website acceleration, etc., though I also did good business in developer infrastructure, like building systems for packaging and testing and revision control, etc.), you'll have fewer customers, but they'll be customers who will value your skills. A jack of all trades, who is actually really fucking good at all trades, is incredibly valuable, but it's difficult to market that because it's difficult to prove you're really good at everything. Proving you're good in one field is just a matter of following the mailing lists and forums in your field, and being talkative and helpful, writing a blog about your subject, and eventually turning all that writing into a book or magazine articles or something.

Of course, I never took it to the next level, as this article discusses. I was still billing by the hour, and still being thought of as a (pretty high end, and difficult to find) commodity. So, I made a decent living, but it didn't scale.

Re: How I went from $100-an-hour programming to $X0,000-a-week consulting

#59

Post by trhtrsh »

bmelton wrote: post #19
debacle wrote: post #7

What if you're already a consultant, but are tired of Internet marketing (and its related accoutrements)? Is there a pivot for that?

SAAS? PAAS? I think it's fairly well known that Patrick consults to help fund his other projects, with the ultimate goal of becoming independent of consulting in favor of passive income. (Apologies if I'm mischaracterizing Patio's intent -- that's at least how it always seemed to me.) Alternately, you could raise your rates a bunch, save the difference and try to retire early.

Patrick's other projects are the self-education, credibility-development, and marketing for his consulting business. He is not going to retire a millionaire on bingo cards and appointment reminders.

Re: How I went from $100-an-hour programming to $X0,000-a-week consulting

#60

Post by patio11 »

danso wrote: post #37

Excellent article. 1. I would be interested in learning more about what a programmer brings to the table in the consulting field. I mean, besides raw programming knowledge. The OP mentions Fog Creek as one of his first clients, a place that obviously is not short on programming insights. What does a consultant with programming chops bring that a non-programmer doesn't? Better ideas? Better tailored ideas? 2) Pedantic…

What does a consultant with programming chops bring that a non-programmer doesn't?

The ability to write functional computer code, for one, which is a superpower.

Besides that, I speak the language, engineering folks generally like working with me over working with "icky marketing types", I have a good understanding of what is easy and what isn't in terms of implementation, I can spec projects or deliver prototypes without needing my hands held too much, etc etc. (And virtually my entire shtick is "Marketing objectives which are worth serious money to you can be achieved by writing carefully considered code.")

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