>I've had consulting on my brain lately, so you'll have to forgive me if I start another thread on this topic ;). Who here does consulting full time in their own business? Of those that do, I have a few questions.

>Once you got yourself up and running, do you find that your business is fairly consistent or does it come in spurts or is it seasonal?

Michel's right - it's either feast or famine. I fill in the famine times with minor fixes/upgrades for old clients. Right now I'm in the middle of a 'feast' and am running frantically.

>What type of businesses do you find contracting you? The reason I ask is, I was considering the cost of a custom devoloped app in VFP, assuming an hourly rate it would be reasonable to assume that an app would cost US $7000-$10,000. I can't imagine a small business paying this much for an app. Or is this estimate way off?

Your price is about right for a small (10-200 person) business. Most of my small-business clients are growing rapidly. They've been doing their own work (invoices on Word, client tracking with FileMaker Pro, etc.) and want to have it all together, convenient for all users. In some cases, they're getting a network installed at the same time. I DON'T do the network installations, since it's not my favorite line of work. If the cost becomes an issue, I ask them how much an intelligent data-entry & billing clerk will cost them for a year....

>How profitable is VFP consulting in general? Without having to give specific numbers yourself, I would consider $50K ($40K base + $10K for all the health insurance and other stuff you have to pay on your own) to be decent.

Well, my mortgage is up to date, and we get a week in Hawaii every year.... (s) We're incorporated, which adds a little to the taxes in the US, but cuts the personal liability and makes the accounting easier. Liability isn't a big thing with my programming, but is important to my husband who's a mortgage broker. When you're adding up expenses, you need to allow for items like sick days (yours & the kids if any) and vacations, time upgrading your computer and learning new software, etc. Billable time is NOT 40 hours/week every week.

>You all know me, I'm always curious about nearly everything dealing with foxpro, so if I've used up my quota of quesitons for the week I'll try to be more conservative in the future ;).

I checked the messages/last 7 days. It doesn't separate questions from answers, but you're not the worst offender.

Barbara