Originally Posted by
jpatokal
This is actually what I'm getting at -- surely there is a connection? At the end of the day, what matters to the customer is their total cost S (and that the work gets done!), not how it's divided up between my expenses and my profits.
I've seen some projects quoted/billed as expenses as a percentage of fees but if you're an independent consultant I doubt this would work well from a volume perspective.
Originally Posted by
jpatokal
An illustration: Let's say there's a local guy who charges W per day with no travel expenses (E=0). Why would the client be willing to instead pay me W+E, or twice as much? Because they feel that they're getting over twice the value out of me.
The assumption is that you bring additional value to the table and are thus worth (W+E), as your services justify (W+E) > W.