Should consulting cost money?

Question

I am sitting on a project with a client and have to sit there and discuss whether something is useful or not. Since I can't program while I am there I don't get paid since I get paid by the hour of programming. Should I raise my programming price or should I make consulting cost money? Its mostly stuff like I don't like the sidebar on the website sort of thing. Please tell me how you feel about taking money from your customer for consulting and how you do it.

Answer 1

You are not paid to program. You are paid to build websites. Time spent discussing the features needed is time spent building the website. Ergo, you should charge for that time.

Answer 2

I would say it's a judgement call. If the amount of work you will get out of it is worth it, do it for free. But if it's eating your time for not much profit then start charging for it and you'll probably find you're not required to be in as many meetings.

Answer 3

Time is money. Bill for it.

Answer 4

Once the project starts, consulting costs money. Before then, it's just a high-level job interview.

Answer 5

Absolutely you should charge - if you have to be there, you should be paid to be there. You were obviously brought on to provide benefit aside from heads-down coding, so you should be paid for providing services other than heads-down coding.

Answer 6

I would say yes. If they require your skills to modify requirements it should cost them money. Depending on the customer though, you wouldn't want to bill them directly, increasing per hour rate by 5% could account for extra time.

Answer 7

If you answer saves your customer development time it definitely costs money, otherwise your customer is getting money from your knowledge without paying.

Now if your answer saves or not development time that's the question. If you can explain to them that it really saves money I don't see a problem charging for it as long as you charge less than it saves.

Answer 8

I charge from the moment I walk in the door, to the moment that I leave. If I work on something outside of the clients office, they get charged for it. How you charge for this is up to you.

You can pad your cost/hour for programming in hopes that you'll recoup the actual time that you invest in "freebies" (otherwise known as bidding per job as opposed to per hour). Of course the risk here is that you'll lose some potential clients because your pricing is too high. Or you could simply state that your cost/hour coding is $ and your cost/hour consulting is $$.

Edited to add: I also wanted to reiterate something. This is a professional endeavor folks. Charge what you think your time is worth. No more, no less. Do you think a lawyer or doctor is gonna cough up "freebies"? There will be clients who pass up your services because you charge too much ( I would venture a guess that you don't want these people as clients anyway ) and believe it or not, there will be clients who pass you up because you don't charge enough.

There is nothing wrong with making an initial consultation free or charging them for it, then refunding the amount paid if they hire you. But I have to question the motives of a client who thinks that you can show up on site, to provide consultations, for nothing.

There are far too many "coders" who cough up crappy websites, crappy UI, crappy DB work, and insecure sites for people who want to do this on the cheap. Which only degrades this profession and the people that choose to do this line of work with integrity and professionalism. I'm not saying we need to bring this profession back up to a suit & tie, but for gods sake, let's help clients understand that this is not a $10/hour profession, nor is it rife with "freebies"....

Answer 9

You can offer a spectrum of choices: from charging for every hour you work on their stuff to a more collaborative partnership (like on-site office, workstation, etc.). And then you can grade their cluefulness based on which end of the spectrum they pick.

Answer 10

I understand that you build websites and UIs.

If you were a landscape architect, you'd either be billing hourly for sitting with the client to understand their requirements and present options, or you'd be getting paid for the entire project (with a limit on how many hours you would spend in meetings). Any contract is fine as long as both sides agree to it.

Answer 11

Depends on how much you want the business. I generally do preliminary talks for simple projects free of charge which I can then build a quote from. Then I charge from this point onwards.

Another way round it is to charge for the spec but add the consulting time onto the spec quote.

Answer 12

I charge for every moment in my consulting projects, from reading emails to phonecalls to meetings. If you're spending your time on their problems, i would bill it.

Of course if you're having a friendly conversation about something else and a job-related issue happens to come up, that's more of a grey-zone. :)

I'd say though, if you can't get them to go along with being billed for your time in a meeting, you shouldn't be in a meeting with them.

Answer 13

Your time is valuable, and discussing and planning the nature of a project is essential value-added activity.

If you bill by the hour, then these activities should be billable.

If you bill based on some deliverable, you may wish to include a certain amount of planning and review that is "in scope" and work out an arrangement where "out of scope" time is billable too. This way you cover yourself in the event of interminable client reviews, etc.

Answer 14

I've been a software consultant over 10 years. Writing code is only a small part of what I do. I believe I provide a lot more value to my customers by providing guidance to them than by writing code.

Naturally I charge for adding this value.

Answer 15

You are paid to work whether you are programming or consulting. No more thought required.

Offering free consultations is the marketing choice you would have to make.