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Online consulting is a steadily blooming industry. There are consultants on almost every topic imaginable, from life coaches to expert gamers sharing their tips.
This getting started guide will explain what kinds of jobs are available, what you need to be a consultant, how consulting works and how much you should charge.
What kind of work can you do?
There really is no end to the topics you can consult on (though certain topics will require legal accreditation — so do your research first). Here are some possible topics, off the top of my head:
- Small business
- Web design
- SEO
- Blogging
- Travel
- Web development
- Sport
- Religion
- Pet training
- Productivity
- Life
- Relationships
- Dating
- Parenthood
- Marriage
- Work/life balance
The list could go on for many pages. Anything people need help with can be a topic for consultation.
What you need
The basic tools of the web-based consultant are email, chat or Skype. If you don’t like the idea of having to meet clients online at certain times (possibly with an unfavorable time difference), email consulting could be the choice for you. Chat allows for more a more conversational exchange without having to talk at the computer screen. Consulting via Skype is the most personal connection and you may be able to charge more for this than the other options.
The next step to undertake before you start sourcing-out clients is to build a profile in your consulting field. There are a number of ways you can do this:
- Maintain a blog in your consulting field.
- Join related trade organizations and associations. You’ll seem a lot more formally qualified if you have certified memberships to official bodies.
- Join a forum on your topic and try to be as useful to other members as possible. You can link to your consulting services in your signature.
- Write an eBook or self-publish a book on your topic.
Your sales pitch
Potential clients will want to be assured that you’re an expert in your field. Your hire me page should essentially include every aspect of your involvement with the consulting topic, as long as it effectively communicates your expertise. It should answer the question: why should people want to pay for your consultation? How are you going to make it worth their time and money?
You could also use one or two of the following offers to help tip the balance:
- If they’re not satisfied after the first hour clients can claim an instant refund (or even a 110% money-back guarantee).
- Get the first half-an-hour free.
- Give clients a percentage discount if they purchase hours in bulk.
Finding clients
You can list yourself on freelancing job sites, buy an AdWords campaign or put a hire me page on your blog or website. You could also purchase a banner ad on a website likely to be frequented by potential clients.
How consulting works
A consultation is a discussion on a particular topic, usually operating under an expert/questioner dynamic. You’ll provide advice and answers and your client will ask questions, field ideas and plug you for suggestions.
You could also consult using a tutor model, in which you prepare topics or lessons for the day and ‘teach’ the client.
Another consultation model is the ‘coaching’ model, where you give the clients tips, tricks and plans to make them better at something.
The kind of model you choose will depend on your topic and the style of consultation which suits you best.
Tips on being a good consultant
1. Give the client your undivided attention. Clients are paying for your undivided attention and that’s what you should give them. A client will quickly grow frustrated if they sense that you’re distracted or doing two things at once. If you have difficulty staying focused, consulting via Skype is probably the best option for you. The immediacy of communication forces you to single-task.
2. Organize quick initial payment from new clients. You should always require new clients to pay you within a week of the date you start consulting with them. This helps establish that they’re serious about your services and don’t intend to rip you off. I’ve heard horror stories of clients promising to pay monthly, taking a month’s worth of free consulting and disappearing into the labyrinth that is the web.
3. Make each hour worth it. If a client looks back on an hour they’ve paid for and thinks “I’m not sure what I got out of that” they may well start to feel that they’re not getting what they’ve paid for. If you feel as if your discussion has meandered (and that may not be your fault), change the topic of conversation briefly and share a useful tip with the client. It may just help save the hour.
How much should you charge?
We can benefit from the commonly held perception that consultants don’t come dirt-cheap. How much you can charge will benefit on your profile, level of expertise, experience and whether or not you can make the price worth it.
Consultants who are helping their clients make money can always charge more than those who aren’t because paying for a consultation is seen as an investment in the future. If you’re working for a client who stands to make money with the help of your advice, you could probably get away with a starting point of $30 an hour and move up in price as your confidence grows.
I’ve no doubt that some people reading this will argue that $30 an hour is too cheap, even as a starting rate, and it is indeed on the cheap side for a professional service. However, when starting out as a consultant you’ve still got your training wheels on. You’ll make mistakes, you might have difficulty answering questions and phrasing your advice clearly. Setting a high hourly rate will only serve to give you performance anxiety. My suggestion is to raise your rates in line with your confidence.
As a consultant dealing with businesses you should aim to eventually be charging more than $50 an hour. Keep incrementally raising your rates until people start to turn you down. How high you can go will depend on how much your clients think your advice is worth.
Consultants on topics without the potential to make the client money can expect a more murky price-range. Clients are likely to be individuals paying you out of a personal rather than a business budget. For that reason, I’d suggest a starting rate anywhere between $20 to $30. If you get more expressions of interest than you can manage, it’s time to raise your rates.
If you’re working as a consultant (or thinking about it) I’d be interested to hear your story in the comments below.
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17 Comments, Comment or Ping
Ritu
HI Skellie! Great indepth article once again. I have been thinking about doing consulting and such in the blogging/networking field. I am by no means a popular blogger or anything but I think I would be safe to say that my strategies on networking with influential bloggers have worked so far.
Also I am writing an indepth article on how to get noticed by popular bloggers and use it to your benefit. I should have it up once my portfolio site is up and running.
Consulting all in all can really be one of the best freelance business if you truly have the knowledge in the related field. If you can establish yourself as someone who knows what they are doing and someone who has been recognized by others, I think consulting is really the way to go.
The most important and notable thing, like you said, is to give undivided time and attention to your clients. You want them to come back to you and a ” full money refund ” policy never fails. But we have to make sure we deliver what we say and what is expected of us. This is when a contract can come really handy, even if its just something typed on Word and agreed and signed by both parties.
Jan 24th, 2008
Willy
Hi Skellie,
Great post. What I’d like to hear from people who do online consulting is what their deliverables are. What kind of work to they provide for clients.
For instance, you could be an SEO genius, but have no idea what is expected by a client. It’s easy to tell them SEO tips, but how do you package it to make it usable for a client who is hiring you because they know nothing about SEO?
That’s just an example, but I’d be really interested to hear your thoughts and the thoughts of of others on what web consultants should deliver and how they should deliver it.
Jan 25th, 2008
James Chartrand - Web Content Writer Tips
This post comes at a really good time, as we’ve had a few requests for consultation in the blogging/website field. It’s gone very well so far with good results, and we’ll be offering it as a service starting… uh, last month, actually
Jan 25th, 2008
Anthony Lawrence
Re: what and how to charge:
A system I have used for almost thirty years now is having a retainer: http://aplawrence.com/foo-self-employed/retainers.html
Jan 25th, 2008
Greg
Skellie,
Get read as usual. It was good to get a sense of what other people are charging for consulting services. We have just launched our ‘08 prices to exclusive clients and are seeing good results so far. We are on the lower end of the pricing spectrum, not because we see ourselves as inexperienced, but because of client base does not have the most capital for a social media marketing initiative.
We deal with bands on a local to indie and regional level. To them, every penny taken away from their gigs, merch and digital download sales is really affecting them Luckily, we have been able to give them an ROI and show them the long term effect of SMM.
On another lucky note, we love what we do and would do it for free if it was in our means, but simply in an office in downtown Orlando, you know that that is just not the case. So I guess we are having some of the best of both worlds.
Jan 25th, 2008
Neil Matthews
I base my consultancy work around what I call a product, it is a series of processes to perform a click fraud investigation.
I charge a flat fee for this type of work.
Jan 25th, 2008
Shayon
One thing that I follow is offering my services free of cost for the first week to any first time client and also give out my advises in forums. That helps a lot in building up credibility.
Jan 25th, 2008
Freelance Writing
Hi Skellie,
Informative post as I’m in the process of setting up consulting with a friend. We both have extensive experience and have individually been approach by several friends to help them set up their blogs.
The natural progression was to look toward consulting and this article has helped to clear up some questions that I had floating around in my head.
I appreciate your insight, thank you.
Monika
Jan 26th, 2008
Stephen Tiesman
Perfect timing. I have been doing freelance production for years. I am tired of just sitting in front of the computer working. So I have decided to refocus my freelancing to start consulting instead of doing.
I have a wealth of knowledge in my field and I figure it’s time I share it (for money of course).
Jan 27th, 2008
danielb
hi, Skellie, how are you?
I enjoyed this article & have two little constructive comments.
The first is to avoid banner ads. Having bought & sold them, I can say I’ve rarely seen much profit - especially for little guys. For example, I recently worked with a client who’d spent $30k on a banner campaign & got just 302 clicks.
The second tip is about hourly rate: While few of us are comfortable picking an hourly rate for the first time, most are comfortable ballparking an annual salary. So here’s a simple formula to figure out your hourly rate:
1. Pick the annual salary you feel comfortable with (let’s say $100k)
2. Divide your ‘annual salary’ by 50 (as an approximation of the number of weeks you’ll work). That gives you $2000 (your weekly salary)
3. Figure out the number of hours per week you want to work (let’s say 20)
4. Divide your $2000 ‘weekly salary’ by the number of hours per week you’re planning to work ($2000 / 20) = $100
Your hourly rate is $100.
I hope that helps & that life’s good!
daniel
Jan 30th, 2008
Martin
Hi Skellie, love your blogs - have only just found them, so I have a bit of reading to catch up on
I’ve done a reasonable amount of consulting to businesses (all about online stuff, but all done offline), and there are a couple of points I think are worth adding.
As you mentioned, there are a few different consulting ‘models’ that you can work with, however in a more traditional sense (and IMO the one that has most value) is to look at a problem the client is having and then offer advice on how they can solve it. Depending on how far you want to take this, some consultants may even take ownership of that problem and work with the client until a solution has been achieved.
Also, as a general rule, the more deliverables you can give the client (reports etc.) the more value they will perceive from your services (as long as they are well presented, concise and help the client to understand what you have done for them)… in an online environment I would suggest sending all your reports as .pdf files (unless sending them hard copies make more sense to your situation), they present more professionally than word documents, or just email etc. IMO.
As for the hourly rate, then this really depends on the type of service you are offering. If you’re just giving tips and advice, or maybe even tutoring on a subject etc. then (depending on the subject), the hourly rates you’ve mentioned are probably a decent place to start. As the advice becomes more specialised though, and as you work towards solving problems the client is having, the hourly rate would increase to reflect this additional benefit you are providing. The formula DanielB posted above is a great way to work out what to charge - there are consultants out there who charge several hundreds of dollars an hour, and while that is usually an exceptional case, hourly rates around $90+ are extremely common (especially in the IT industry).
Remember, being a consultant is about running a business - so your hourly rate shouldn’t just reflect your time involved, but also the costs of running your business. Don’t be afraid to sell yourself short, confidence is an issue, but the sooner you embrace that and get over the fear of ‘charging too much’, the happier you will be, I guarantee it
Feb 3rd, 2008
Annedien Hoen
I think it’s a bit tricky to have a ‘training wheels’ rate. Potential customers would not want to feel as if you’re using them as practice material for real customers. The psychology of having a training wheels rate is that you might also behave as a training wheels consultant. Another way to go about this is to have a normal hourly rate, high end even, and give them something like a ’startup discount’ and only charge 50% of the hours. Feels different if you charge 6x$30 or 3x$60 minus 50% startup discount. It also communicates differently to your potentials/clients.
Raising your rates to a decent lever after this may also cost a lot of time and energy, and you might lose clients.
Last but not least: people turning you down for your hourly fee is not a sign that you should stop making it higher. It just means that your fee starts to function as a barrier to entry for your services! Of course your services have to be of a certain standard and be worth the money, but you have to consider another rate to be another kind of bate that attracts another kind of fish. If you won’t sell any hours after a while it’s another story but you have to give it some time and see what happens. You might very well start attracting more high-end customers!
A killer strategy for getting clients is to start giving away your added value BEFORE you actually get an assigment. It’s a form of sample marketing, it builds trust and gets people to really experience your help, energy and qualities. Don’t wait until you get an assignment before you start consulting. Of course you don’t want to end up as a free consultant, you have to start charging at a certain moment, but it’s a great way to get new clients. And it gets ya good karma!
Feb 4th, 2008
Martin
In case anyone’s psychic translators aren’t working properly, in the last paragraph of my comment two posts above, I of course meant “Don’t sell yourself short” and not “Don’t be afraid to sell yourself short”… kind of gives it a different meaning, but I’m sure you all knew what I meant
Feb 4th, 2008
Andrea >> Become a consultant
I disagree with setting your fees low. Once you’ve been a “bargain” product, you’ll never be able to convince people that you’re a premium product.
Feb 13th, 2008
kristen
Thanks for the great blog. I actually started my own business several years ago to bring my own product to market and now have about 15 women a month that call to ask advice that I provide free consultation. I’m very willing to work and pay it forward like others did for me so I started http://www.moms-business-coach.com and found your info helping in me to further define that business strategy.
Feb 18th, 2008
Glenn Abel
I found that offering a first-visit analysis for, say, $150, helps establish that the client can pay. So I look at a web site, find about 20 problems (always easy) and then customize a report from my boilerplate. Takes an hour or two.
Then present to the client and make it super clear that you expect to be paid on the spot. Clients can’t take more than an hour and a half of this kind of gab, so I offer to stay as long as they like. At worst you get $150. If they stiff you on some work, at least you had that.
Mar 12th, 2008
zoe
how does one become a travel consultant?
It sounds like a fantastic plan, and in fact, i’m working on a shopping-tour guide at the moment… but how could this be done over the phone/skype?
Mar 24th, 2008
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