New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: How and when to ask for money for advice?

Ask HN: How and when to ask for money for advice?
3 by mosselman | 0 comments on Hacker News.
Long story short: a company has been asking me for advice. I enjoy giving it, and I'd like to make it a monthly/weekly or whatever side gig with pay. How would you pitch this in an e-mail or call, and what would you think reasonable pricing is for this? First, some context: Through an investor in the company I am engineering manager of, I got asked to give some advice to another company they invested in. They were having some issues in their development team, and a non-technical founder had to take over management temporarily and was genuinely motivated to do an excellent job of it and make the development team feel happy and productive. We had an excellent talk, and I was able to give some clarity to some concerns and provide him with some good insights. The other day I received an e-mail from them again, thanking me for the advice. They said it really helped a lot, and they already saw results. And they had a different question related to some payment things and asked if I wanted to talk to their CFO. They also said they wanted to respect my time, which was evident from our first talk. Coming back to my question: As I said, I enjoy it; I can spend an hour here or there per month or some other interval which I think would provide them with some good value in exchange for a fee, and I could learn from it myself as well. How would you pitch this idea? I got this idea from listening to an episode of Art of Product with Rob Walling, in which he explains he does this consulting once a week for an hour with several companies. I am no Rob Walling, but I can share some good advice every now and then. Are there any people here with experience with these types of consultancy arrangements? Any advice on pricing? Any ideas on the pitch?

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