How to charge for your advice

I’m a web developer specializing in Shopify, and I’ve written a few blog posts and made some youtube videos that are gaining popularity.

Now I’m getting at least 3 people a week emailing me with various questions – technical solutions, recommendations – for their specific situation.

I used to answer this stuff via email for free. Some answers are fairly straightforward and take 5 mins. Some required an hour of research and a 500 word email to answer (I didn’t mind because I was curious myself).

It’s definitely providing value, so I feel like I can make money doing this. But how?

Do I tell them to pay me a fixed fee for a consulting call? I really don’t want to have multiple calls per week. I value the flexibility of my time, and I don’t like being booked for anything. Besides that, I’m not a talkative guy.

So I’d prefer to consult by email – is that possible or is it unprofessional?

Secondly what if they pay me and I don’t come up with a good solution for their problem?

Thirdly what about time spent on research? What if some questions require more time than my fixed consulting fee? How do you price consulting anyway?

Lastly how do you actually offer it? Someone emails you with a question and you basically say “pay me if you want the answer”?

Sorry if these are dumb questions – I’m not finding much info about this as the keyword “consulting” is dominated by the finance / corporate world and large companies. Mine are small online stores – 3-person startups, individual entrepreneurs, family businesses, etc…

How to charge for your advice

It’s definitely providing value, so I feel like I can make money doing this. But how?

Charge a fee.

Do I tell them to pay me a fixed fee for a consulting call? I really don’t want to have multiple calls per week. I value the flexibility of my time, and I don’t like being booked for anything. Besides that, I’m not a talkative guy.

It’s very common to bill hourly and provide ad hoc help. Also common to charge set project fees. You can determine how to communicate.

So I’d prefer to consult by email - is that possible or is it unprofessional?

You’ll likely lose some potential leads because some people want to see an actual person if they are paying for the time. But it’s not unprofessional if you’ve set the expectation up front.

Secondly what if they pay me and I don’t come up with a good solution for their problem?

That’s up to you. Some people charge for their time whether a solution was developed or not. Some people will discount their wok if they can’t figure out the issue. Some people write off the time if they feel it didn’t provide value. That’s really your call.

Thirdly what about time spent on research? What if some questions require more time than my fixed consulting fee? How do you price consulting anyway?

This should be priced into your fee/rate. It’s why consultants often have high hourly and project rates. Most consultants price based on the value of the work, not the time it takes to answer. This covers scenarios where the project takes way less time than expected, and also scenarios execution took longer than anticipated.

i.e. someone asks how to add oAuth to a Shopify app. You do it 24/7, and this is a 10 minute response for you. But for the person asking, that’s hours of research and a day of tweaking code before they come to the same answer. They’d spend roughly 10 hours on it. A consultant might think “if they make $100k/yr, 10 hours is roughly $500 of pay. So I can charge anything up to $500 for the answer – even if it takes me 10 minutes for me to do – because that’s more efficient / effective for the client vs. doing it themselves”

Value based pricing also comes into play when looking at company size/scale. If this is the final piece of an app for a F500 that has a launch date of next week and HAS to get done this week; that value is a bit more than some random guy fiddling around on a side project in their spare time. Most consultants will have multipliers for the value of the answer and their expertise and price accordingly.

Lastly how do you actually offer it? Someone emails you with a question and you basically say “pay me if you want the answer”?

“That’s a great question and I’d have to dig in a little to get an answer. Truthfully I’m starting to get overwhelmed with some of the ad hoc questions and I’m not able to properly respond, so I have to start charging a small fee for questions like this to cover my time researching and responding. I hope you understand. I have the info I need to get started, so I don’t think we need a call to clarify – I’ll just send an email when I have the solution. Based on your question, I think getting a suitable answer would cost $xxx. If I’m not able to find a solution I’ll only bill for the first hour of research time, which would be $yyy. If you’d like me to go ahead and begin, I can start working on this [today/tomorrow/etc.] and likely get you an answer by [date]. Let me know how you’d like to proceed!”