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General Consulting Advice Urgently Needed

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I've got some questions about consulting as a Java developer. Thanks to a 
personal connection, a project needing a Java developer has just come to 
my attention and I can probably get this contract if I play my cards 
right. 

Unfortunately, as I've said elsewhere in this newsgroup, I'm a Java 
hobbyist and have done very little paid work as a Java developer so I'm 
not completely sure on how to land this project. Most of my past 
consulting has been developing websites so I'm not sure on several 
details of how to present and sell myself.

The opportunity is literally sitting in my inbox as we speak in the form 
of an email from my friend's friend. He's asking me what my rate is and 
I'm not sure what to answer. I don't know what the going rate is for Java 
development in this area since there isn't a whole lot of Java 
development around here and I have no idea what rates people are asking. 
Frankly, I'm willing to do the work at almost any rate he's willing to 
offer, although, naturally, I'd rather get more than less. I'm also 
concerned that if I set my rate too low, he'll think that I'm really 
awful at what I do and look elsewhere for someone to fill the 
opportunity. Can anyone suggest a way to come up with a rate that 
encourages him to give me the job, even if we have to negotiate it down 
(or up) to something we both can live with? 

In a nutshell, if I tell him $10/hr, I think I'll be signalling that I'm 
so awful that that's the best I think I can get. If I tell him $100/hr, I 
think his expectations may be beyond my abilities and/or I'll be so high 
that he won't even bother to try to talk me down. I don't want to give 
him a number that is going to scare him off and convince him that this is 
not worth further discussion.

A related issue is what I think of as R&D work. In the past, if I've 
gotten jobs to do something that I don't entirely know how to do, I've 
made a point of absorbing the R&D costs and not passing them to the 
customer. For example, if someone wanted me to build a website and 
include an online shopping component so that customers could buy things 
via a shopping cart and credit card, if I didn't know how to implement a 
shopping cart and set up a merchant account, I'd research that on my own 
time and not charge the customer, since he basically assumed I knew how 
to do that going in. It didn't feel right to charge him for the time it 
took me to get up to speed. I treated it as an investment in my own 
education and did the learning on my own time, charging him only to 
implement the solution, once I figured out how to do it. I'm not sure if 
that's standard practice among other consultants or something very odd, 
maybe even unprofessional. I'd really like your thoughts on how I should 
handle this. Should I assure him that the things I have to teach myself 
in order to complete this project won't show up on his bill? Or will that 
seem unprofessional? Or is he going to expect to pay me while I teach 
myself the elements of his project that I don't already know? 

As I said, this opportunity is sitting in my inbox and I don't want to 
keep him waiting excessively. I know that requests for urgent help are 
greatly frowned upon in newsgroups and believe me, I'm kicking myself 
that I didn't figure out this kind of stuff long ago but it just wasn't 
anything I particularly needed to know at the time. Any advice you can 
give me would be much appreciated. Sorry to put it on such an urgent 
footing; this came up very suddenly and unexpectedly. 

-- 
Novice

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Thread

General Consulting Advice Urgently Needed Novice <novice@example..com> - 2011-11-28 15:41 +0000
  Re: General Consulting Advice Urgently Needed Jeff Higgins <jeff@invalid.invalid> - 2011-11-28 11:37 -0500
    Re: General Consulting Advice Urgently Needed Novice <novice@example..com> - 2011-11-28 17:04 +0000
      Re: General Consulting Advice Urgently Needed markspace <-@.> - 2011-11-28 11:09 -0800
        Re: General Consulting Advice Urgently Needed Novice <novice@example..com> - 2011-11-28 19:48 +0000
          Re: General Consulting Advice Urgently Needed markspace <-@.> - 2011-11-28 12:14 -0800
            Re: General Consulting Advice Urgently Needed Rhino <no.offline.contact.please@example.com> - 2011-11-28 21:28 +0000
              Re: General Consulting Advice Urgently Needed markspace <-@.> - 2011-11-28 14:14 -0800
                Re: General Consulting Advice Urgently Needed Novice <novice@example..com> - 2011-11-29 05:24 +0000
                Re: General Consulting Advice Urgently Needed Martin Gregorie <martin@address-in-sig.invalid> - 2011-11-29 20:44 +0000
  Re: General Consulting Advice Urgently Needed Novice <novice@example..com> - 2011-11-28 17:53 +0000
    Re: General Consulting Advice Urgently Needed Novice <novice@example..com> - 2011-11-28 19:52 +0000
    Re: General Consulting Advice Urgently Needed Arved Sandstrom <asandstrom3minus1@eastlink.ca> - 2011-11-29 07:20 -0400
      Re: General Consulting Advice Urgently Needed Novice <novice@example..com> - 2011-11-29 16:06 +0000
        Re: General Consulting Advice Urgently Needed Lew <lewbloch@gmail.com> - 2011-11-29 12:04 -0800
          Re: General Consulting Advice Urgently Needed Novice <novice@example..com> - 2011-11-30 00:12 +0000
            Re: General Consulting Advice Urgently Needed Lew <lewbloch@gmail.com> - 2011-11-29 22:02 -0800
              Re: General Consulting Advice Urgently Needed Novice <novice@example..com> - 2011-11-30 20:28 +0000
  Re: General Consulting Advice Urgently Needed Roedy Green <see_website@mindprod.com.invalid> - 2011-11-28 10:03 -0800
    Re: General Consulting Advice Urgently Needed Gene Wirchenko <genew@ocis.net> - 2011-11-28 10:44 -0800
      Re: General Consulting Advice Urgently Needed Novice <novice@example..com> - 2011-11-28 20:13 +0000
        Re: General Consulting Advice Urgently Needed Gene Wirchenko <genew@ocis.net> - 2011-11-28 12:59 -0800
      Re: General Consulting Advice Urgently Needed Roedy Green <see_website@mindprod.com.invalid> - 2011-11-29 14:04 -0800
        Re: General Consulting Advice Urgently Needed Gene Wirchenko <genew@ocis.net> - 2011-11-29 15:07 -0800
    Re: General Consulting Advice Urgently Needed Novice <novice@example..com> - 2011-11-28 19:56 +0000

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