jagthedrummer

Since the book focuses on value pricing for consulting projects it's obviously not applicable to the SaaS that I run.

However it's been fantastic for my software development/architecture consulting.

I recently completed at project for a client where I used the value based approach from the beginning of the sales cycle and very early on identified the real goals that the client had in mind and was able to work with them to identify a dollar amount that they wanted to invest to fix the problem. We agreed on that amount and I went to work. After completing the project my effective hourly rate was around $600/hour, and the client was extremely happy with the results.

(I know you're not a fan of the term "effective hourly rate", but it's the best term I have to talk about that concept since I didn't agree to an actual hourly rate with the client.)

Had I gone with my old process of saying "this is my hourly rate and I'll track hours" it's doubtful that the client would have agreed to $600/hour and I would have made much less on that project.

I don't think Jonathan meant to use "laborer" as a slur of any kind. I think he's trying to get at the distinction between being "a pair of hands" on a project, who is told what to do and how to do it VS being "a brain" on the project who is operating at a higher level of abstraction to identify problems, propose possible solutions, determine which solution is best, etc...

Those are two very different things, and the advice in the book would be MUCH harder to apply if you are filling a "pair of hands" role.

Hope that makes sense and answers your questions.

This is a tool for people who don't want to be anywhere near a command line.

Nope, edits do not count towards the total. You can make as many revisions as you want to a given document. At this point there's nothing to stop someone from doing exactly what you describe. I'm mainly counting on attracting customers that value their time enough that they'd find it silly to expend time and effort gaming that particular system.