[lifeisstillgood]

Why not keep them till the scheduled Friday meeting?

The client is expecting it Friday, probably does not have time to talk to you on Tuesday afternoon.

Its not lying, its not cheating, its saying I will build X and doing it in a professional manner.

[porker]

Are you sure?

> Bill for a weeks work, as long as the deliverables come in does it matter if the week was only a few hours long?

"Hello Mr Client, this job will take a week to do, so I need to bill you for a week of my time". 4 hours + 1 meeting on Friday, job done.

That sounds like lying and cheating to me. Which is a nuisance, as I'd like to do it.

[MetaCosm]

It is lying and cheating, and it is illegal.

Generally 'standard weeks' are done under the assumption that you will work at least 40 hours on the project (often more, I average 44). The concept is that the project is significantly more than 40 hours, and accounting for every moment is overhead that doesn't serve anyone. Client doesn't care and it simply wastes your time to do it.

[lifeisstillgood]

Its not lying and cheating nor illegal to say "I will build you a purple widget for your website, you can have it by Friday. The widget will cost you 1000 bucks"

Get away from selling your time please. Sell something else, sell a feature, sell a widget, sell a service. As a "bum on seat" I have charged by the hour, the day, the week or even a month. And each an every time I was expected to, contracted to do 8 hours a day, 5 days a week.

I was an employee.

I could not supply them a simple single product, custom built for them because I had to wade through meetings and politics and inertia and everything else we all know and love. They were too disorganised, too chaotic, too out of control to know what they wanted at a level below "months of work from dozens of people", and so the ride continued.

This is where the Internet is opening up new opportunities - because now it is dismantling (read automating) traditional marketing and even management. One guy can reach a global audience with good SEO, and one group of people can do away with 80% of industrial world management (including geo-co-location). And all that will dismantle the chaotic crazy world of contractors selling their time inside corporations who need software but are not able to deal with the implications.

The contracting world will look very different in ten years. It will look a lot like what patio11 is selling.

So, stop selling your time - instead sell a packet of something, for about the price of a week of your time, to do something that will take about a week of your time.

It looks a lot like selling a week of your time, except that

* it does not say so in the contract

* it is something you can and will automate.

Selling a product is 80%+ automated and 20% custom.

Selling a productised-consult is 20% automated and 80% custom.

The more that 80% dives down, the more profit you make in your "week". However the more it looks like a product, the less you can charge :-)

Do I care that my accountant only spends an hour looking over an annual return he got by pressing a button, yet charges a grand? No, because I make up for it on chats over coffee and the knowledge that he would catch the horror of a mistake and fix it. No horror, good for him. However that week he did tackle a horror for someone. Next time it will be me.

[bdunn]

As he said, he's selling a fixed bid project that is scheduled for a week.

The client he's looking to work with is looking for results, not how long he spends sitting in front of an IDE.

[porker]

Brennan, I respectfully disagree. He said:

"This is exactly why you might want to consider moving to weekly billing. Bill for a weeks work, as long as the deliverables come in does it matter if the week was only a few hours long?"

What you sond to be advocating is fixed-price bidding/value-added pricing; but that's not the same as the OP.

If he'd said: "This is exactly why you might want to consider moving to billing on value. Bill based on what it's worth to them, as long as the deliverables come in does it matter if it only took a few hours?" I'd have had no qualms.

[lifeisstillgood]

I reserve the right to mis-speak. Especially if I clarify in later posts ;-)

[porker]

Mis-speak accepted :)

[bdunn]

Gotcha. I misread. He misspoke. And yes, life is still good :-)