How to make money consulting online

How can you make money consulting online?

You can make money as a consultant online by having specific knowledge. Outreach to  potential customers and show them how they can benefit from hiring you as a consultant. Offer your consultations through Zoom, Skype, email, calls or texts.

Imagine, sending invoices to clients for $1,000 every single month. You are working less hours than you did at your nine-to-five job and are making more money.

Making money as a consultant online is possible.

Luckily for you, I’m going to show you how consultants make money. I’ll even give you some tips to get started in your own consulting business. Hopefully, by the end of the article, you will have a good understanding of how much money you can make as a consultant.

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How do consultants make money?

Consultants make money by sharing a specific knowledge that is hard to come by. Clients understand that hiring a consultant will save them time and money to avoid costly mistakes. As a consultant, you charge your clients for providing your knowledge which helps them achieve their goals.

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How do I do online consulting?

To start online Consulting, you must first determine what your specific knowledge is that you can help people or businesses with. You must then outreach to potential clients and show them how they will benefit from your services. Meet regularly with your clients in order to help them solve their problems.

Determine your strengths

The first step is to determine what you are knowledgeable about. You need to have more knowledge than your typical person on a specific subject. 

Are you going to help people lose weight, make more money, grow their business?

Ideally, you already have many years of experience helping people with your specific knowledge. For example, you may be a personal trainer of 20 years and have helped many people lose weight.

You won’t make it very far as a consultant if you’re not very knowledgeable. Your clients are going to have very specific questions and you’re going to need to be able to answer them. Clients will not hesitate to drop you if you are not providing enough value to their business or life.

Would you want to pay $50 an hour for a weight loss coach that has never helped anyone lose weight? Would you feel comfortable hiring someone that constantly said, “let me get back to you on that?” 

You will be more successful if you are a subject matter expert.

Determine your rates

You will also need to determine your rates or how much you’re planning on charging. How much you charge will depend on the value you provide and the type of services you offer.

A weight loss coach may not be able to charge nearly as much as someone who can help you make $1,000,000. There are plenty of fitness experts out there charging a lower rate than someone who can help you make a bunch of money.

As you can imagine, it is much easier to find weight loss coaches. You can visit almost any gym and sign up for someone willing to help you lose weight. 

Because there’s a huge supply of weight loss coaches, you won’t be able to charge thousands of dollars per session. You simply have too much competition who are willing to charge lower rates.

However, it is extremely hard to find anyone who has built multimillion-dollar businesses. Even if you could find these types of business owners, how many of them are willing to Mentor you?

The amount of money you make is directly correlated to how much value you can provide.

In addition, you will also be able to charge more or less depending on your services. You can charge more money for in-person weight loss training than a Zoom consultation. You can charge more money for a zoom consultation than unlimited email or text support.

Outreach to potential clients

Having clients is the only way you are going to make money as a consultant. You need to spend a considerable amount of effort in acquiring your clients. Some consultants outreach through cold email and others advertise to naturally attract clients.

The first strategy is the outreach to your clients. This can be in the form of cold emails or cold calling. Performing outreach is a tedious process, but rewards those who can stick with it.

For example, maybe your niche is helping people make more money in their careers. You might spend a considerable amount of time contacting people through Linkedin. 

Cold calling or emailing does have a relatively low success rate. You might only get one client for every 100 people you reach out to. However, it is one of the best ways to get clients to sign up for your services for free.

The second strategy is to use paid advertising to gain interest in your service.You run paid Facebook advertising which allows clients to reach out to you if they’re interested.

Advertising is a good way of obtaining clients because you are not spending your time on people that are not interested. Essentially, you are getting qualified leads who are more likely to sign up for your consulting services. 

Meet with clients

As a consultant, your main business is to meet with clients. You can meet with them over video chat or do something less formal such as email and text communication. The best part about Consulting, is that you can set up meetings in a way that works best for you and your client.

Invoice

Don’t forget, you are being a consultant to make money. Therefore, it is important that you always remember to invoice on a consistent basis. You need a way of tracking how much each client owes you, a way of invoicing those clients, and a means of identifying when they’ve paid. 

One of the easiest ways to keep track of how much a client owes you is to keep a Google Sheets. Simply keep a spreadsheet up-to-date as to how much each client owes you. 

You will also need to invoice on a consistent basis. Personally, I like the idea of invoicing once per month. Invoicing too frequently can annoy clients and involves a lot of time on your part.

Invoicing doesn’t have to be complicated. Services like PayPal make invoicing an extremely easy process. You can send an invoice , get notified when you’re paid, and easily track your invoices.

PayPal does charge fees for their service, but the fees are worth it if they make invoicing simple. Alternatively, you can use a service like Venmo or do invoicing yourself.

What qualifications do you need to become a consultant?

In most cases, you do not need any qualifications to become a consultant. At a minimum, most consultants have a bachelor’s degree in their field of consulting. However, real world experience is the best qualification a consultant can have.

Obviously, you shouldn’t ever advertise yourself as something you’re not. Don’t advertise yourself as a nutritionist if you’re not a certified nutritionist.

How much money can I make as an online consultant?

Earning potential is often uncapped when it comes to online consulting. The majority of online Consultants will charge between $50 and $150 per hour. Some online Consultants may have the skills required to charge over $1,000 per hour. The amount of money made is determined on the services and value you can provide.

Ultimately, the amount of money you make depends on how you set up your consulting business.

Let’s assume you want to start a weight-loss consulting business. You might find other similar  consultations that have a going rate of $70 per hour. Therefore, you might want to stick in the $70 an hour range.

However, you can always find a way to increase the amount of money you can earn. For example, a weight loss consultant might also sell supplements to their client. 

So now you are earning $70 per consultation and a recurring commission on supplement sales.

Some consultants may even choose to have a retainer fee. A retainer fee is a fee that is paid for simply having you on call. Should you choose to charge a $20 retainer fee and have 100 clients, you’re making $2,000 in retainer fees.

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Summary: How to make money consulting online

As you can see, it is completely possible to make money as a consultant online. The best Consultants have a specific knowledge that most people don’t have. Your clients are willing to pay you to help them avoid costly mistakes or reach a goal faster.

The more value you can’t provide to your clients, the more money you can make.

To start Consulting, start by identifying your specific knowledge. What are you good at that people would be willing to pay for?

You will then need to know how much to charge your clients. Take time to carefully consider your consulting fees. Make sure you compare your rates to what other people are charging in similar areas.

You will then need to spend a lot of time finding clients.  The cheapest way of finding clients is to perform cold email or cold calls. Cold outreach is very time-consuming, but it works.

Finally, you will need to meet with clients over Zoom, Skype, email, or text. At the end of each month, send your clients an invoice using something like PayPal.