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Hi Patrick, As someone who's just starting down the road that people like you have paved, I can't express enough thanks for showing us that a) it's possible an
by alinajaf 15y ago
Hi Patrick,
As someone who's just starting down the road that people like you have paved, I can't express enough thanks for showing us that a) it's possible and b) that it's OK to not want what everyone else does (i.e. full-time employment or the big start-up exit). Not to mention doing a pretty good job of spelling out exactly how we can have the same results for ourselves. Here's to your continued success!
BUT, like other posters have said and you've sort of addressed in the OP, $55,000 for 10 weeks of work comes up to $5500/week. I'm your average joe 26-year-old rails crud+ajax monkey and they charge me out for more than that.
I personally know a consultant (who coincidentally is also a former JET) whose rates are two orders of magnitudes higher than yours, and his main spiel is cutting through politics, selling people on conversion and then getting internal tech resource to install google website optimizer.
He works for a couple of weeks a year, then spends the rest of his time advising startups he likes for free, working on his own projects, and trying to get his sci-fi novel finished. He has some technical knowledge, but most HN users could code circles around him.
You quite often advise us young engineering types to negotiate better and get paid more. Well here it is right back at you. Charge more. I honestly thought you were charging those sort of rates and I was a little shocked to read otherwise.
- patio11 15y agoQuoting the post: I typically quote fairly high rates and mostly stick with them, unless there is another reason I really, really want an engagement to happen. That said: drats, thought I had edited out that 10 weeks number. Memo to self: hire an editor.
- phil 15y ago$550k per week? That pencils out to $1375 per hour, a pretty astronomical rate in any industry. Edit: dropped a 0 earlier. I meant to say $13,750 per hour. Nice work, if you can get it.
- alinajaf 15y agoApologies if I was misleading, not as high as that but in six figures.
- rgrieselhuber 15y agoA week?
- alinajaf 15y agoI don't want to belabour this point too much, but yes. The conversation does not look like this: "Hey guys, I have 10 years of experience doing consulting, my rates are $3000 / hour, hire me for two weeks and to improve your conversion." According to my consultant friend, it's a lot more like this (bad maths all mine, also note that I have no idea what real numbers here would look like, so I could be wildly off-base): A: "So you currently do $20 million in revenue through your website. Based on initial analytics me and the tech team have put in place, we estimate that one out of a hundred visitors to your site become paying customers, in other words you have a 1% conversion rate. All things being the same, what would it mean to your annual revenue if I could increase that rate by 0.5 of a percent, to 1.5% over the course of a year?" B: "Well, if you could do that it would mean an increase in revenue by $10 million." A: "Right, so what I propose is that you bring me on board for a couple of weeks to put systems in place to monitor that conversion and test ideas for increasing it in a way that makes sense for your organisation. My fee for this would be $200,000." To be perfectly honest I don't have any specifics or solid facts to back this up, just the single anecdote and even that is second hand. The point I was trying to press home is that patio11 is selling himself short.
- rgrieselhuber 15y agoThanks. That's a great way to sell.
- joshu 15y ago$1k/hr is not unusual for a good lawyer.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- jgeralnik 15y agoUnless you work a 400 hour week, you seem to have missed a zero. Assuming a 40 hour week, $550k is $13750 per hour.