I've been a consultant for 15+ years and have often come to this conclusion that hourly billing is not ideal for various reasons. I haven't found a great alter

I've been a consultant for 15+ years and have often come to this conclusion that hourly billing is not ideal for various reasons. I haven't found a great alternative, and the problem is I'd want a great alternative I could enthusiastically sell to my clients. "Always do fixed price" doesn't seem feasible when scope is not fixed, fixing it would necessitate time-consuming research and waterfall style project management, and clients often don't know scope until they have tangibles in hand. (ie "this looks great, but can you do this "little" thing we invision in scope, but you invision out-of-scope-but-not-worth-arguing-about"") I feel like a retainer of sorts may make sense, but that seems a hard sell for some projects. "Make us this 5 page app that does XYZ". "Ok, pay me X/mo forever". Both consultant and client would need an exit that I'm not clear on. Also, to be honest about it, the consultant should limit their clients to some reasonable number so that they can serve them in reasonable time.