Want to up your consulting rate? Try overwhelming force.

Want to up your consulting rate? Try overwhelming force.
30sleeps.com

a) Do something measurable. "Rails programming" is not measurable. "Rails programming... where I directly contributed two million dollars of yearly revenue attributable to a 3 week engagement" is measurable.

b) Do it for rich people. (Sam Walton proves there is money to be made on selling stuff to poor people -- like, say, a ramen profitable startup -- but as a service provider, rich people are a much better market.)

They can pay your rates, and a 1% improvement in their income is much more likely to be motivating to them than a 1% improvement for a poor person, startup, etc. Take a look at your friendly neighborhood lawyers, accountants, investment advisors, etc: transactional revenue on a small number of rich people means you command rates most programmers scarcely dream of.

I mean, if a Rails consultant told you he charged what a first year associate lawyer did, many people would scoff at him. "Think you're some kind of hotshot? Sure, 15 years of experience programming, deep domain expertise, wrote book on Rails in X context, whatever. What makes you think that is worth $300 an hour!? RentAResource.com only charges $30 an hour, and I can get top flight Rails consultants for $50."

Oh, bonus points: many rich people do not perceive the difference between $50 and $300 an hour like many people here do.

3) Blog about your demonstrable ability to solve problems like X for firms like Y with results like Oh My Goodness We'd Be A Fool Not To Hire Him.

[Edit: Someone actually uses RentAResource.com? a) I'm sorry, I didn't mean to pick on them specifically but b) that is the most dehumanizing website name I've ever heard of outside of the porn industry.]

Fixed bid contracts are the way vast segments of the industry work.

Not being able to do fixed bid work basically says "I'm bad at estimating and don't know how to control scope creep".

Of course you can do fixed bid contracts. But you'll have to make an ironclad arrangement about what is to be done within the scope of the contract and what is not, you really have to know your stuff (no training on the job!), and how you'll deal with being compensated for stuff done 'out of scope'.

You may have to re-negotiate a new fixed price based on the increased scope of the project, or you might tack on a per-hour bill for work done out-of-scope, depending on the size of the additional work relative to the original.

Good luck bidding for a consultancy job when someone else is able to offer a fixed price bid, especially if they deliver, they'll be preferred supplier for a long time to come afterwards.

Case in point, the OP writes that he took on a contract for writing a package based on a platform he had no experience with. If you do that 'fixed price' you're going to get burned, if you do it on a per-hour rate then you're screwing the customer.