Branding David

A blog that I really enjoy, ReadWriteWeb, recently surveyed some bloggers and consultants to see what the upper limit people are earning for their work.

They seemed pretty much on the money regarding blogging as a job, but it surprised me to see what consultants are earning.

No one we surveyed named an hourly consulting rate below $150 per hour. $300 per hour was the most common rate named. Some listed monthly rates of $2k to $4k per engagement, which we assume probably means 20 to 40 hours per month.

It is even more interesting to me, as I set my rate below the $150 an hour mark, despite creating value far beyond that rate.

I also find it funny as Jim Kukral, a very successful consultant has decided to give away, for free, a half a day, each wednesday, towards local businesses, entitled Bail Out Cleveland, in hopes of helping them to deal with the current market conditions.

Are consultants worth hundreds of dollars per hour? Well, it really depends on their experience and ability to distill and transfer their knowledge in a useful and actionable way.

I do think that some people might want to adjust their rates to make their knowledge easier to access during these rough times. I would also love to know how other consultants in any industry calculate their hourly rates, so if you are or have been a consultant, please comment below with the factors that you built into your rate sheet.

I have been to a few different conferences, and one of the biggest issues I have seen is how people put together their slides. It seems like everyone wants to write a novel or pack in as many words per slide as they possibly can, and in doing so, their slides become absolutely useless.

There is a simple rule to try to keep the number of words to around twenty-five per slide. Only around five bullet points, and one or two images. It makes it easy for people to read, understand, absorb and truly act on.

If you aren’t following the above rule, you are starting your presentation off on the wrong foot. Keeping it simple is always the best route, and with all of us suffering from various levels of information overload, please be kind and reduce the number of words, pictures and other distracting elements on your slides.

Now more than ever before, businesses need to understand the web, blogging and all of the intricacies that go into promoting a brand, service, or company online.

There is no time to learn how to do these things with the economy being in such shambles, and no signs of an upswing in sight.

If you are a small business looking for support, consulting or a better understanding of the web, contact me, as the time to embrace non-traditional ways of doing business is at hand.

It is less expensive to advertise online. It is easier to build up a brand than other traditional media routes, and you will find conversions much higher online where there is a path from content to site to purchasing or contacting your business where print, radio and television require people to take extra steps and create opportunities for them to forget about your company, phone number or web site.