Comment by himynameisdom
7 years ago
GK, I remember your presence on that thread. For those who were not there, it's under comment history. You spoke to the point of people needing your help (and not just anybody), which is kind of ridiculous in this case and the case from last week. You're opining value-driven fixed rate wisdom on a thread about a simple HTML page. If you dictate the pace of a specialty, of course you can charge whatever you want and call it "value-driven." For the other 99% of consultants out there, supply and demand bring pricing to an equilibrium. Retainers need not apply here nor in 90% of first-time client engagements.
Consultants who win the job will always leave money on the table. That's how you get the gig to begin with. Value is relative, and it takes at least two to tango come contract time until cost (what the client sees) and value (what you see) intersect.
Billing hourly brings pricing transparency clients want while protecting you from true under-utilization. If you're not being utilized because of red tape that was unassumed at contract time, a change order is the logical next step to account for scope remaining/additional scope.
As I said somewhere in that thread, I only ever encounter arguments against value-based billing from other contractors/consultants, and not companies. There's probably a psychological topic there to explore but I won't go there. I have nothing to gain by convincing other contractors/consultants, except the feeling that I helped someone escape the hell that is hourly billing.
Yes, it helps to be offering some unique value that can't just be found on Upwork (see excellent posts on this [1] and [2]), but you don't need to be in the 99th percentile to do value-based billing.
I don't know much about the author but they're probably in that 99% whose work you think is commoditized (or at an equilibrium). Clearly this is not true, since they were paid $21k for work that could've been done by a large portion of that 99%.
[1] https://www.kalzumeus.com/2011/10/28/dont-call-yourself-a-pr...
[2] https://tomcritchlow.com/2019/04/04/the-strategic-independen...