What should I charge for consulting?

H

hunter33

Limp Gawd
Joined
Mar 8, 2007
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I'm an IT Administrator at the corporate office of a fairly big company. Occasionally I do some side work, but not much as my family/free time/hobbies are more important than a few extra bucks.

A company is moving their corporate headquarters to my town and they just built a new office building close to my house. I was told about this before they moved and shot them a resume just to test the waters. They met and had dinner with me one night and asked me to do some consulting. They want some servers and a network & backup infrastructure set up, secure wireless, etc, nothing difficult to start. They have ordered their hardware and today asked me to start on some work and they asked for an hourly rate.

I really have no idea what to charge. A typical network consultant in my market area (close to Nashville, Tennessee) might make anywhere from $50/hr for pc tech work up to $250 an hour for someone with multiple Cisco certs. This new office is very close to my house, the work will be easy, and they are willing to let me work whenever I want including after hours. It seems like a good thing to put some extra $$$ in the money market and make new contacts. I was thinking of asking for $75/hr. Is this reasonable?

Thanks
 
I do about the same thing you do and I charge $50 hr for tech and $35 hr for teaching, non of that figures into my web design though. I guess it would depend on the market you are in, I live in a very rural part of Ohio so $50 around here is premium but $75 might be premium somewhere in a bigger city. Just use your good judgement and don't short yourself to get the work, like you said it's side work anyway which almost always becomes a headache.
 
Ask as much as you think they'll pay but stay competitive. That would be my advice.

I charge $85+ for most side-work I do. I charge less per hour if it is going to take a long time.
 
It all depends on the skill level, market share, demand, length of the project, and location location location.
 
If you've already got a regular job, then ask as much as it's worth for you to be giving up your spare time for more work. If they say no, then you are not out anything :) You'll still have that time for family/friends/and your hobbies.

I'd say $75 an hour sounds good, but I'm not real familiar with consulting fees.
 
<=== SMB Consultant for a living...I'm 100-125/hour...depending.

A lot of it can be based on what you think you're capable of setting up.

How big will this companies network be? Will you just be setting up a basic active directory and file/print shares, etc? Or..get quite involved in fine tuning database stuff? In which case you can ramp up the rates a bit higher.

For larger projects, sometimes quoting flat fees is better. Example....for a Microsoft Small Business Server install..I commonly start at $5,000.00...for up to 20 nodes..if more, higher cost.

Think about your competence. The client is better off paying you a higher rate...to get something done right the first time....versus paying someone with less experience..who may charge lower rates..but down the road the client may need to get someone else to finish the job better, or allow them to benefit from the setup more. I've seen so many "wanna-be" techs go in and install Small Business Server for cheap rates...but the client doesn't get shown everything Small Business Server can do, so they never realize the value of it.

"You get what you pay for!"
 
I'm glad you are responding. I have a question for you. Are you adjusting your price right now. If you are, are you letting your infrequent repeat customers know? When I discuss about the current time on consulting newsgroups, things are little darker than few months ago.
 
$100 an hour min.
If its a long drive $125

$5k for a 20 node sbs? Wish I could get that. I charge $2000 aka 20 hours with existing infrastructure if they provide a helper. Otherwise they pay $50 an hour for 10 hours for a helper on top of the $2k.
There is a guy doing unlimited node sbs for $500 I often make my $2k cleaning up his messes.
 
Things haven't been dark for us...to be honest, this year...matter of fact, for the past 3 or 4 months it seems we've been doing more new servers than the past 2 years combined. And it's not like we were slow for the past 2 years. In the SMB market over here...we're swamped.

I haven't done a widespread "rate increase" in a couple of years...for now, the 100 - 125 is for new clients we get, based on what level of expertise we decide their networks warrants.

I've been focusing on doing more "flat rate" quotes for jobs...someone wants a new server, I take a look at everything and quote a flat rate for the project.

I've also been working on pulling more clients in as fixed monthly rates. I bill them a flat rate per month, and my work varies per month in how much time I spend there. This takes a while of experience to come up with a flat rate..that's fair for both you, and the customer.
 
stormy1 said:
$5k for a 20 node sbs? Wish I could get that. I charge $2000 aka 20 hours with existing infrastructure if they provide a helper. Otherwise they pay $50 an hour for 10 hours for a helper on top of the $2k.
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I include a lot in that though, I try to turn them onto SBS a lot more than someone that just walks in...setups the server, shows them how to log into their workstations and change the tapes on the server.

I show them RWW, and include some time spent remoting into their home PC and helping them through RWW.

I show them Outlook, public folders, contacts, and how to use them, and OWA

Basic Sharepoint, how to release updates in WSUS, how to monitor the servers backup, if they want to use the built in fax..how to use that.
 
YeOldeStonecat said:
I include a lot in that though, I try to turn them onto SBS a lot more than someone that just walks in...setups the server, shows them how to log into their workstations and change the tapes on the server.

I show them RWW, and include some time spent remoting into their home PC and helping them through RWW.

I show them Outlook, public folders, contacts, and how to use them, and OWA

Basic Sharepoint, how to release updates in WSUS, how to monitor the servers backup, if they want to use the built in fax..how to use that.
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ah ok that makes sense, I might hit close to that if they need the added service.
I charge separate for outlook and sharepoint and remote access training if they need it.
I have had pretty good luck selling a monthly service where I vpn in once a week and check everything and do basic user adds and things like that and all they have to do is change tapes.
Takes on average about 15min a week and I charge $150 a month or $1500 for a year paid in advance.
 
hunter33 said:
Occasionally I do some side work, but not much as my family/free time/hobbies are more important than a few extra bucks.
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Holy crap. I thought I was the only one ;) I know some techs who are willing to do side work, never made sense to me.

It's actually amazing that people think you do what you do for "fun" and actually want to screw with issues after hours.
Yes, it's a hobby of sorts, but when I can sit down and test stuff on MY time in MY house without worrying about breaking something, that's alot more enjoyable. If I screw up what I'm working on, who cares? If I don't want to screw with it I don't have to. Working for someone else means you've got to make sure it works when you leave.

Also, what has majorly turned me off of being a tech for friends/family or anyone else for that matter, is no matter what machine you touch, you have to scan/update the darned things, in addition to whatever issue they have.


As for your question, like others have said it depends on how much you know. If you can pretty much take the whole network under your wing, I don't think $100/hr or more is unacceptable, especially if you'll be frequent.
If you just see yourself as basic setting it up and then getting out of it, maybe $75/hr for setup is all I could see.
The more stuff you can get into and manage, the higher you can charge. Simple as that.
 
TechieSooner said:
Holy crap. I thought I was the only one ;) I know some techs who are willing to do side work, never made sense to me.

It's actually amazing that people think you do what you do for "fun" and actually want to screw with issues after hours.
Yes, it's a hobby of sorts, but when I can sit down and test stuff on MY time in MY house without worrying about breaking something, that's alot more enjoyable. If I screw up what I'm working on, who cares? If I don't want to screw with it I don't have to. Working for someone else means you've got to make sure it works when you leave.

Also, what has majorly turned me off of being a tech for friends/family or anyone else for that matter, is no matter what machine you touch, you have to scan/update the darned things, in addition to whatever issue they have.


As for your question, like others have said it depends on how much you know. If you can pretty much take the whole network under your wing, I don't think $100/hr or more is unacceptable, especially if you'll be frequent.
If you just see yourself as basic setting it up and then getting out of it, maybe $75/hr for setup is all I could see.
The more stuff you can get into and manage, the higher you can charge. Simple as that.
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Lol, trust me I know :( I have 4 PCs networked at the house, but hate working on them or the myriad software on them. The real fun of the network is LAN gaming, file sharing, and being able to test new things when I feel like it. Sometimes new hardware (like a new GPU) can be fun. My wife's family and mine call so much wanting PC help I hardly even answer the phone any more. And then there is everyone at work wanting to bring in their home PCs when they have problems. And people wonder why the IT guys are so hard to track down, why we don't answer the phone, etc. If I answered the phone every time it rang or went and fixed everyone's PC who asked for help I would never get any project work done at the office or have any free time at home. I'm a IT Admin and take care of our 10 location WAN, website, phone networks, all our servers and software loaded on them, etc. It's fun and rewarding at times and I work with a bunch of cool people, but I don't care to take the work home every night. There are other things to do that are interesting too.

This office where the consulting is will eventually be quite large, but only a few people are moving up from the old location to start. Initially they want AD and a DC, some apps & servers configured, laptops & desktops, some printers, secure wireless, etc. I'm thinking the work will initially take a Saturday, and then there will probably be more work at some later date. I do have a good paying day job and don't intend to spend much time doing outside consulting. But this office is only about a mile from my house and they are not being difficult about the hours or anything so I'm thinking about doing it. The work doesn't look like it will be very difficult either. I'm really leaning towards $75/hr. My brother is a consultant for a wealth management/consulting firm in a small Kentucky town, and he gets $125/hr. But that's his day job. This will be a "set up and get out" but they will probably call with more work at some point.
 
hunter33 said:
Lol, trust me I know :( I have 4 PCs networked at the house, but hate working on them or the myriad software on them. The real fun of the network is LAN gaming, file sharing, and being able to test new things when I feel like it. Sometimes new hardware (like a new GPU) can be fun.
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Exactly. New projects and cool stuff is fun to mess with. Especially if you get frustrated and don't want to screw with it anymore, drop it and leave it for later.
Working for someone else, you don't have that option. That's the difference!


hunter33 said:
My wife's family and mine call so much wanting PC help I hardly even answer the phone any more. And then there is everyone at work wanting to bring in their home PCs when they have problems.
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;) That's why I let 99% of calls go to voicemail. I check the voicemail to determine the importance (of course you always have people that say "I need your help ASAP on this... Call me!!!!" and you have no idea if a server went down or if they can't find a file :rolleyes:)

As for the home computer stuff, I just flat out say no. I cite "liability" reasons as my main excuse :D

hunter33 said:
And people wonder why the IT guys are so hard to track down, why we don't answer the phone, etc. If I answered the phone every time it rang or went and fixed everyone's PC who asked for help I would never get any project work done at the office or have any free time at home.
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Man, I swear, you've got the same job as me, buddy.
It's just others in the company (including your CEO...) are of the opinion to answer your phone no matter what... And then wonder why ____ isn't fixed yet, lol...


hunter33 said:
This office where the consulting is will eventually be quite large, but only a few people are moving up from the old location to start. Initially they want AD and a DC, some apps & servers configured, laptops & desktops, some printers, secure wireless, etc. I'm thinking the work will initially take a Saturday, and then there will probably be more work at some later date. I do have a good paying day job and don't intend to spend much time doing outside consulting. But this office is only about a mile from my house and they are not being difficult about the hours or anything so I'm thinking about doing it. The work doesn't look like it will be very difficult either. I'm really leaning towards $75/hr. My brother is a consultant for a wealth management/consulting firm in a small Kentucky town, and he gets $125/hr. But that's his day job. This will be a "set up and get out" but they will probably call with more work at some point.
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If you're happy with $75, do it. We all know that's reasonable, which would also guarantee that they'd call you back too.
 
hunter33 said:
And then there is everyone at work wanting to bring in their home PCs when they have problems. And people wonder why the IT guys are so hard to track down, why we don't answer the phone, etc. If I answered the phone every time it rang or went and fixed everyone's PC who asked for help I would never get any project work done at the office or have any free time at home.
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Heh...I know what you mean there. So many times when I walk into a clients office....to do some work on their business network, one of their employees will come up.."Hey, lemme ask you a question..."....and right away I'm saying to myself :rolleyes: "Ugh..here it comes...something about popups in their browser, or what kind of computer should they buy for home".
 
YeOldeStonecat said:
Heh...I know what you mean there. So many times when I walk into a clients office....to do some work on their business network, one of their employees will come up.."Hey, lemme ask you a question..."....and right away I'm saying to myself :rolleyes: "Ugh..here it comes...something about popups in their browser, or what kind of computer should they buy for home".
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I nip that one in the bud right away- "Sorry- I don't work on home PCs". Now though, I turn them over to my part-time guy, who DOES work on home PCs on the side... for cash only. "Are you using Antivirus?" "Um.. I don't know... is that Windows? Or Windows Office? I have that..." OMG. "Mam- do you have any teenage children? Any boys?" "Well yes... but we talked to them about that and they never go to those sites". Yeah right. Junior's subscribed to every pornocopia site in Russia.

YeOldeStonecat said:
I've been focusing on doing more "flat rate" quotes for jobs...someone wants a new server, I take a look at everything and quote a flat rate for the project.

I've also been working on pulling more clients in as fixed monthly rates. I bill them a flat rate per month, and my work varies per month in how much time I spend there. This takes a while of experience to come up with a flat rate..that's fair for both you, and the customer.
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A lot easier, isn't it? No surprises- no time tracking. No monthly shockers. I do 90% of all my work on monthly fees. Allows us a predictable monthly revenue stream, kind of like a paycheck. Sometimes I make out, sometimes they do for the month. Like you said- takes time to learn how much to charge, and every plaace is different depending on how much hand-holding they need.

I call them "Monthly Network Maintenance", since they are not contracts- either of us can cancel or change whenever we need to. Also, in NY there are sales tax implications for Contracts. Customers really like the predictable monthly IT costs, I like the predictable monthly income :D
 
@YeOldeStonecat...$5k for a 20 node sbs?

So this is for configuring the server and joining 20 pre-installed desktops/laptops to the network and getting all the SBS functionality working with hand-holding where it is needed?

edit: sorry i just saw that you put a bit of detail in an earlier reply to this.

I've always wondered also, how about line-of-business applications? Do you maintain these, or do you just focus on the SBS side of things?
 
atomiser said:
@YeOldeStonecat...$5k for a 20 node sbs?

So this is for configuring the server and joining 20 pre-installed desktops/laptops to the network and getting all the SBS functionality working with hand-holding where it is needed?

edit: sorry i just saw that you put a bit of detail in an earlier reply to this.

I've always wondered also, how about line-of-business applications? Do you maintain these, or do you just focus on the SBS side of things?
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Yeah....that's the target I aim for. Now...certainly there are factors that can lower that, or..on the other hand..raise that.

Brand new, including fresh spanking new workstations..with little or no "data transfer" from old systems? Certainly this 5K number can drop.

Existing systems with only a replacement server..keep same workstations? Factors may be able to drop it a little if the customer is whining that 5K is too much. So..eyeball the workstations. Are they relatively healthy and clean and in good running order? Little data to transfer? Or..are they cloners of all sorts of mix-matched 2K and XP versions, with some running e-mail on OE, others in Outlook, others in Eudora, etc. You can spend substantial time on these. ;)

Do they have all their POP3 e-mail information? Or will you have to call their webhost and spend days and nights documenting and resetting this?

Do they have their DNS control panel credentials if you need to change MX records to upgrade their e-mail?

Installation media and license keys for all existing software?

There are a lot of things I've learned over the years, that can bite my arse and make things time consuming for me. So I may shoot a little high to cover myself.

Yeah many people can build and deploy an SBS server in a matter of hours. But to do it all right...gain full functionality of it, so clients can sit back and enjoy all those benefits and features, and have solid running workstations...based on experience..it's not too high.

Another colleague of mine told me a story not long ago. He put a bid on a potential new client..a non-profit place, for a Small Biz server. I think it was around 20 nodes matter of fact. I "think" his consulting fee was around 4K. Another "wanna-be tech" put a bid in too. That competitors bid was like...1/2 the price that my friend submitted..including consulting fees and hardware/OS for the new server. I think this person had only 1K for consulting/setup fees. This client went with the lowest price..the competitor.

A few months later, since my friend knew someone at this office..he was at their office to drop something off to his friend there. He got a peek at the server..and the setup.
*The competitor never setup e-mail in Exchange....left the workstations with POP3.
*The competitor never did a good setup like My Documents folder redirection.
*The competitor never showed the client about RWW, how to remote from work. This client was still paying for and using gotomypc. :rolleyes:
*The competitor put in a crappy SATA hard drive server..and the client complianed how slow it was. My buddy had put in a bid for a nice server with SAS drives.

So my buddy explained all of this to some of the office staff there..and they were like "Wow..we didn't know that? What a ripoff this guy was".

Just an example of "You get what you pay for"....don't sell yourself short if you think you do a good job and deserve the money, esp if you're someone who goes the extra mile for clients.
 
twwabw said:
I nip that one in the bud right away- "Sorry- I don't work on home PCs". Now though, I turn them over to my part-time guy, who DOES work on home PCs on the side... for cash only. "Are you using Antivirus?" "Um.. I don't know... is that Windows? Or Windows Office? I have that..." OMG. "Mam- do you have any teenage children? Any boys?" "Well yes... but we talked to them about that and they never go to those sites". Yeah right. Junior's subscribed to every pornocopia site in Russia.
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Yeah, it's tough. I find myself having a hard time saying "no". I have more frequently just given them advice to take it somewhere....as I tell them it takes many hours and I'm expensive. Esp after some balked at the bill I sent them...I mean, I get tired of spending 6 hours or so cleaning one up...billing them a discount rate of 250 or so..and still having them complain.

On the flip side...some are usually the managers or good office contacts at clients of mine..and I don't want to let another IT person near their systems at home, to get familiar with them. It's like part of me wants to consider my clients home PCs still part of my turf, since they access the workplace via them. Eh...it's tough. But I must admit...I need to say "no" more..to home PCs.
 
chiming in a little late.

Sounds like a decent but doable small side job that should be quoted as a whole with extra time if needed.

What I mean i set a given price for so many hours.... $2k for 20 or 25 hours. then say after the 20 or 25 hours mark the going rate is $75 per hour in addition.

I'd keep a simple but efficient work log of the time you put in so you can show them how much time you put in.... (of course you can buff it a little if you want it to look like you came in right at the final 20 hr mark).

Oh.... I didn't read all the posts.... but this isn't a wham bam thank you ma'am kinda gig..... So you make $2k right off the bat for some side work right?!? Well how about another $100-150 per month for maintenance and oversite of their stuff?!? Simply checking in on the servers remotely maybe Sunday night while watching TV and emailing someone at the office that all seems fine...

I do that for 2 other medical clinics here in town... I'll tell ya,the extra $200-300 a month is pretty nice at the end of the month...

... the wife does't get to touch my extra side money... so it's all for computer gadgets and guitar gear!
 
YeOldeStonecat said:
It's like part of me wants to consider my clients home PCs still part of my turf, since they access the workplace via them. Eh...it's tough.
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that's a tough call.... for those people that are completely clueless and I can 'read' them that they are porn watchers or too dumb to run AV at home.... I'll work on their home systems to save any headaches later on the work stuff....
 
turb0 said:
Well how about another $100-150 per month for maintenance and oversite of their stuff?!? Simply checking in on the servers remotely maybe Sunday night while watching TV and emailing someone at the office that all seems fine...

I do that for 2 other medical clinics here in town... I'll tell ya,the extra $200-300 a month is pretty nice at the end of the month...
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$100 per month??? Not a chance. Too little- either you're charging too little or doing too little. I promote it as being their in-house IT guy, who's never in-house. I do virtually all of it remotely, except for the odd times I need to touch something myself, or set up something new. And if you're truly their IT guy, you're checking EVERYTHING weekly- event logs; backup status; hardware management utilities; A/V alerts; updates. This can't be done in one hour/month.
 
YeOldeStonecat said:
On the flip side...some are usually the managers or good office contacts at clients of mine..and I don't want to let another IT person near their systems at home, to get familiar with them.
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Yep- that's the exception. I will work on the owner(s) or principals home PCs- if they are monthly maintenance clients. Helps stroke their egos that you'll only work on THEIR stuff and nobody elses.
 
YeOldeStonecat said:
Another colleague of mine told me a story not long ago. He put a bid on a potential new client..a non-profit place, for a Small Biz server. I think it was around 20 nodes matter of fact. I "think" his consulting fee was around 4K. Another "wanna-be tech" put a bid in too. That competitors bid was like...1/2 the price that my friend submitted..including consulting fees and hardware/OS for the new server. I think this person had only 1K for consulting/setup fees. This client went with the lowest price..the competitor.

A few months later, since my friend knew someone at this office..he was at their office to drop something off to his friend there. He got a peek at the server..and the setup.
*The competitor never setup e-mail in Exchange....left the workstations with POP3.
*The competitor never did a good setup like My Documents folder redirection.
*The competitor never showed the client about RWW, how to remote from work. This client was still paying for and using gotomypc. :rolleyes:
*The competitor put in a crappy SATA hard drive server..and the client complianed how slow it was. My buddy had put in a bid for a nice server with SAS drives.

So my buddy explained all of this to some of the office staff there..and they were like "Wow..we didn't know that? What a ripoff this guy was".

Just an example of "You get what you pay for"....don't sell yourself short if you think you do a good job and deserve the money, esp if you're someone who goes the extra mile for clients.
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Had the exact scenario a few years ago- client thought my proposal was too high, went with another guy who fed them a line of BS about what he knew about SBS. Put in a cheapo Dell SC1420 w/SATA, and simply put, had no idea what he was doing. Spent all of his time installing "performance" tuning apps, spyware checkers, CCcleaners, etc., since all he really understood was home desktops. Server was a mess- share permissions were a mess, Exchange was a mess, etc. These guys are distributor reps, and typically their Exchange server will see 1000-1500 messages per day. He had no idea. Had their DNS completely screwed up, etc. All PCs were originally XP Home, so he bought a bunch of retail XP Pro upgrades, instead of VLK, and just did in place upgrades of the OS's, bringing all their old dirty laundry with them.

After about 3-4 months, the owner sheepishly called me, admitted it was a mess and he made a mistake, and what could I do. LOL- told him it was my original proposal, PLUS the cost (T&M) of undoing everything this clown did. Bought a new PE2800 w/SCSI, a reall tape drive instead of the crap DDS, etc. That was 3 years ago this spring, and they're still a loyal customer, and referred me to several new clients too.

The original guy? He refunded their money, and went back into whatever hole he came from.
 
twwabw said:
$100 per month??? Not a chance. Too little- either you're charging too little or doing too little. I promote it as being their in-house IT guy, who's never in-house. I do virtually all of it remotely, except for the odd times I need to touch something myself, or set up something new. And if you're truly their IT guy, you're checking EVERYTHING weekly- event logs; backup status; hardware management utilities; A/V alerts; updates. This can't be done in one hour/month.
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the 2 offices are really small systems that have one server each with DB's and backups.... everything else they do is through an online software...

I have minimal work to do... so $150 or so a month is the baseline.... if anything is needed in addition, the appropriate hourly rate is applied....
 
twwabw said:
since all he really understood was home desktops. and went back into whatever hole he came from.
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ROFL! Fits in perfectly with your original statement..which I borrow from time to time.

"I love other consultants..they're my best source of business!" ;)
 
YeOldeStonecat said:
Boat looked mighty cold and lonely this morning in the backyard...covered w/snow. Keep that single digit stuff up your way end of this week will ya? :D
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Yeah- mine's been cold and lonely since Columbus day... only 4 months to go... OMFG! Single digits here this week, but up north at the summer place calling for -20f Thursday night :eek: . Highs of 0 during the day- ugh. Not a good day to go up and do some early waxing LOL
 
Some side oracle dba and principal unix stuff I charge 120/hr to look at a problem or issue their on site team couldn't resolve.
 
WOW, after reading the guys post on the sbs setup I feel even more screwed over than before!

My bosses came to me last november because they were going to replace our server then with a more up to date machine. I never wanted in on it because I was not really a network guy but hardware I am good at, yep I got pulled into it when I suggested they not buy their little $700 Dell wannabe server. I ended up building them a superior server to what they were going to buy for about $6500 and looking at what Dell offered the same thing would have cost them around $15000 through Dell. So I saved them all that money and I got pulled into the networking end of it! I ended up doing RAID, Server 2003 install, terminal serivces 30 clients, lightspeed and configuring their 30 client computers. I got no bonus and they paid me my labor rate at work of $10hr. at the time.
 
atomiser said:
I've always wondered also, how about line-of-business applications? Do you maintain these, or do you just focus on the SBS side of things?
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To answer your questions....when building a server/network, I usually check ahead with support for my clients LOB software....and configure things optimally for that program. I try to stay outside of the program..meaning, I don't learn the LOB package, I don't configure much in it, I don't setup user accounts in it, etc. I'll make sure it's setup properly, tweaked on the server, work with its internal backup system, etc. I'll do updates to it. But for settings inside of the LOB software, I leave that for actual office staff at my clients.
 
YeOldeStonecat said:
To answer your questions....when building a server/network, I usually check ahead with support for my clients LOB software....and configure things optimally for that program. I try to stay outside of the program..meaning, I don't learn the LOB package, I don't configure much in it, I don't setup user accounts in it, etc. I'll make sure it's setup properly, tweaked on the server, work with its internal backup system, etc. I'll do updates to it. But for settings inside of the LOB software, I leave that for actual office staff at my clients.
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same here

Unless you have 100 clients running the same software it just don't pay to spend the time to learn a program inside out for day to day admin stuff for it.
These days even the software install and upgrades is usually done by webex by the vendor.
 
@yeolde & stormy...

thanks guys, pretty much the same as me over this side of the pond - although i've found very mixed responses in terms of the external suppliers wanting to work with us. some of them are fantastic - best support i have ever received, but one of them...i had to even pretend to be an employee of my client before they would work with us. madness!
 
atomiser said:
@yeolde & stormy...

thanks guys, pretty much the same as me over this side of the pond - although i've found very mixed responses in terms of the external suppliers wanting to work with us. some of them are fantastic - best support i have ever received, but one of them...i had to even pretend to be an employee of my client before they would work with us. madness!
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I always call them and say this is stormy1 calling on behalf of client-name.
Some companies want a support code before they will talk to you in which case I just get it from the client.
I haven't ran into any huge issues yet.
 
On side jobs for people i know i charge 65 an hr, If its a new customer i charge 85-105 an hr. All depending on what i am doing
 
You really have two options:

Charge a single fee for the entire project scope
Charge an hourly fee

Fees are typically beween 75-150 depending on how skilled you are an what you can bring to the table.
 
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