Jonathan Stark

I highly recommend reading Jonathan Stark’s material on this topic. It changed the way I think about billing for software projects and advisory work. https://jonathanstark.com/ His book “Hourly Billing is Nuts” is particularly good: https://jonathanstark.com/hbin

If you want to make $100,000 from anywhere you need one skill, sales. Learn how to sell. Read and watch everything you can on selling. I recommend you start with "How to Become a Rainmaker: The Rules for Getting and Keeping Customers and Clients" by Jerrfey J. Fox. Also learn how to stop charging hourly for your services and see https://jonathanstark.com/

You're welcome! I'm glad it was useful. If TPM seems useful to you, you'd probably enjoy signing up for Philip's newsletter. He sends out an e-mail every day, and I usually find them useful and insightful. Along the same lines, you might like Jonathan Stark: https://jonathanstark.com/ I haven't bought anything from him (yet), but I signed up for his e-mails and find them valuable.

for me to hire someone like you the main question is that you have a good idea of what you are getting into. without any relevant work experience i'd worry that you might find that this new field is not for you, and you'd rather do something else. (i know i can expect you to try your best to keep the job, but i'd like to know before hiring if you'll enjoy it) you won't need a bootcamp, but you should at least be familiar with the territory. aside from that, try some thinking outside of the box. what other experience do you have besides programming? what industry knowledge have you gained from working at a medical device company? are there any startups where you can use that industry knowledge? or try freelancing? what are the pain points in the medical device industry? can you solve them and sell those solutions? as mentioned, for regular employment 150k is kind of a ceiling. to go beyond that you need to do something to stand out. https://jonathanstark.com/ has some good arguments about that pay ceiling. it applies to freelancers billing hourly just as much as it applies to employees because in both cases you are paid for time. to earn more, you need to break out of that.

This is a good opportunity to re-frame your value to the company. Instead of focusing on hours worked, focus on what value you are bringing to them. If their website is a core part of their business, it's enormous - they're getting the peace of mind that if anything happens they have someone reliable they can call to get things fixed. Depending on the company, you might even be able to figure out exactly what 2 hours downtime means to them in $ terms and go from there. You should look into Jonathan Stark [1], he talks a lot about "hourly billing is nuts" and how to think differently about how you work/think about your time. For example: https://jonathanstark.com/how-i-realized-that-hourly-billing-is-nuts [1]: https://jonathanstark.com/

I've moved my effective hourly rate from $250/h to up to $1k/h by billing on a project basis. I did this after I ran across Jonathan Stark's book Hourly Billing is Nuts[1] and implemented a lot of his advice. The two best things I've done to increase my effective hourly rate and my topline revenue in my solo consulting practice have been 1) taking his advice to ditch hourly billing and 2) niching down to focus on Trial to Paid conversion[2]. 1 - https://jonathanstark.com/hbin 2 - http://www.trialtopaid.com

Jonathan Stark is a thought leader / coach / writer / blogger etc that has been beating the drum on time-based pricing vs value-based pricing. He helps software engineers and others get off the time-based model and transition to value-based. Here's his website: https://jonathanstark.com/ Here are some interviews where he covers the topic https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UT32G9wmONg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B1b7QlQILRo

This is right on the money (heh). For further reading, check out patio11 (https://training.kalzumeus.com/newsletters/archive/consulting_1) and Jonathan Stark (https://jonathanstark.com/)

Yeah, billable hours is bad (for everyone). Jonathan Stark talks about this a lot: https://jonathanstark.com/ Lots of programming jobs aren't tied to that, though.

I want to like this a lot, but it's not quite there for me. A datum says it is "Project Billing" and has a rate of $300. Is that $300 per hour? Is that $300 total? What does that mean? I need to be able to filter by location. For me, comparable large US cities. My cost of living is vastly different than someone living in India. For this to be most useful, I need to be able to put in my rough skillset and then find how much similar people charge. Just browsing rates around the world isn't that useful. And that brings me to the last issue. Hourly billing is stupid [1]. As much as possible, you should avoid charging hourly. It incentives you to work slower, more poorly, and have a worse experience with the client. But it's too hard to say, "I charged USD 100k for my project," because you need to have a complete and intimate understanding of the project. For example, my latest consulting gig was fixing some Google Analytics and Facebook conversions for a small business. They were broken, and I fixed them. It took me ~15 minutes, and they paid me $1000. They got incredible value (their ads started working properly again), and I got paid for minimal effort. What do I put down on a site like this, $4000/hr? 1: https://jonathanstark.com/

Try this: https://jonathanstark.com

I don't charge by the hour. I charge fixed prices only for project work. For advisory retainers, I charge a flat rate per month. All upfront (or 50% up front and 50% in X number of days). Billing by the hour misaligns incentives. (Obligatory link to Hourly Billing is Nuts: https://jonathanstark.com/hbin )

When you get bored with $500/hr: https://jonathanstark.com/hbin

I'd start with Philip Morgan's work on Positioning: https://philipmorganconsulting.com/the-positioning-manual-for-technica… I'd also consume anything from Jonathan Stark: https://jonathanstark.com/hbin

Now I feel pretty foolish for spending a few hours of my time developing a mobile app to use his API. http://jonathanstark.com/card/#api

I'm not so sure that I trust "coffeestrategies.com" (to me, a random stranger on the internet with an apparent anti-Starbucks agenda) more than I trust "Jonathan Stark" (to me, a random stranger on the internet with an apparent pro-Starbucks agenda)... I'll say this: if it's truly a corporate sponsored viral marketing campaign, it's a very good one. I'm not convinced by this random blog post though that this isn't just someone genuinely doing what he says he's doing. http://jonathanstark.com/blog/2011/07/14/broadcasting-mobile-currency/…

There's no money on the card? http://jonathanstark.com/card/api/latest

All in just one year? Bloody hell. Every single one of those "went well" bullet points is a major achievement, especially starting a consulting business and already making $300k in revenue. I wouldn't give up on the consulting part of your business so quickly. The business model is easy to understand and business is more consistent and reliable than a SaaS business that still has to get traction. Unless you manage to charge according to value rather than time, a consulting business model will always be constrained by the time you're able put in. Still, at that revenue, you could do a third of your current workload and still be well-off and have time on your hands to pursue other goals. Then there's always increasing your rates ( https://training.kalzumeus.com/newsletters/archive/consulting_1 ). I assume that at that revenue low rates weren't your problem but if you managed to work at full capacity at your last rates chances are that at least some of your clients would've paid higher rates, which would equal the same revenue but less time you have to put into that part of your business. Value-based pricing is another - in my opinion the preferable - option for growing a consulting business but it's more difficult to achieve. There are resources such as Jonathan Stark's courses that could help you in that regard: https://jonathanstark.com/vpb that

(Maybe it's just me being overly... I don't know the word, but overly something...:) > And It’s funny to see those comments on a site titled “HackerNews.” It's as if he's trying to guilt people here into thinking "oh, that's true! Startups have to disrupt! Therefore it's okay for him to fuck with stuff because he's a startup! It's okay!". Which to me is really really lame. Let people form their own opinions. The social experiment was people giving to others, for the experiment succeed it required people to pay it forward, for it to fail it'd require people to not pay it forward, based on Jonathan's reply[1] to the entire situation I think it's pretty clear there was never the intention or expectation that someone asshat would come along and take all the money. Why they're still trying to justify this and won't just accept they shit all over something good is beyond me, maybe they're that desperate for publicity that this is all they can do. Grasping at every last second. [1]: http://jonathanstark.com/blog/2011/08/13/an-open-letter-to-sam-odio/