At 09:55 30/04/01 -0700, William W. Viergever wrote:

>Only a 1000? <g>

That's certainly the figure than many 'sole consultants' work to. If one is working for some sort of 'firm', with support staff, then one can generally do much more than that. However, if one is essentially "on one's own", there are very substantial elements of non-billable time - and unless ones is to forget about 'getting a life' (away from work), that generally limit ones billable hours considerably. For example, on average I spend maybe 20% of my 'working hours' enagaged in discussions (meetings, written or whatever) about potential future work projects, a very high proportion of which never 'come to anything' - and that's before one starts thinking about those activities known as 'admin' :-)

>And as a unsolicited piece of advice - quoted hourly rates are great, but, >in my experience, the sooner you can move to fixed price quotes, the sooner >you can begin to make *real* money. Obviously, this assumes that you are >able to extract an agreed upon quote that you are able to come in under.

I couldn't agree more - and that's what I always try to do. However, it is a two-edged sword, since there have been more occasions than I care to remember on which I have seriously underestimated the amount of work involved when I have agreed a 'fixed price' up front!

>Again, me thinks my situation might be a bit different than other >"consultants" in that I'm sort of a hub for multiple clients, vs. being >sort of a spoke and being tied to just one-at-a-time clients as many others >are -thus it's alittle more feasible for me to do these "fixed-price" >thingies.

I'm in roughly the same position as you, and, as I've been saying, I think this is a very different situation from those 'consultants' who are effectively doing a series of 'full time jobs' in all but name.

Kind Regards,

John

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