Success in Sweatpants

In my city and in the market in which I work (small to medium service companies), my “on the street” rate is about double my “virtual” rate. Why is this?

One reason is that I don’t need to cover as much overhead to procure virtual jobs. On-the-street jobs require face to face meetings, which require unbillable time from me, gas and mileage from my car, and supporting stuff like appropriate clothing (and the dry cleaning to maintain it) and accessories. This all translates to money that I need to bring in as revenue—and that money (overhead) gets calculated into my rate.

And though my on-the-street rate is in line with my local competitors, it is still a fair chunk of change. Which means that I need to do a lot of savvy marketing to procure business.

The key to selling services is trust—the client has to trust that I will get the job done right, and though they may be quite willing pay the rate, they want at least a reasonable level of confidence in me before they will hire me. Creating this confidence requires all the usual suspects in the marketing world—referrals and testimonials, face to face meetings, well-executed proposals, and the like.

This all takes time and overhead expense that has to get calculated into the rate. And the lion’s share of that time and expense doesn’t exist in the virtual marketplace. More on this shortly.