Anyway, keep up the good work on DTrace. I have not used it myself, but everything I’ve ever read about it sounds very positive.

The idea of a micro-retainer seems like an inevitable one in the era of micro-consulting. There are, of course, some legal issues that need to be dealt with – if someone starts paying you $200 a week as a “retainer” then you might have trouble convincing the IRS that you are an independent contractor – though if you have a dozen such clients, then that should be (I would hope) evidence in favor of the independence of your status.

Web or software development will always entail some risk, and I think there will always be some conflict between the developer and the client about who should pick up that risk. There are some advantages in being able to afford the risk, of course. I once had a client ask me if she could pay me after her startup was actually public – I said fine, and I did delayed billing her for the first 7 months of work. This allowed me to charge a higher-than-normal hourly rate, a kind of interest on the debt she was running. When she did finally pay me, the bill was large.

Of course, one can only run such a risk when one has some reason to trust the client. Most of the development situations that I’ve seen are exactly the opposite – the relationship is new and trust on both sides is limited. In that case, the smartest strategy seems to be to limit risk by breaking the project down into small pieces, dealing with small, fast iterations, and allowing small payments for small blocks of work.

You are right that a lot of background task, such as research, often don’t end up in the invoice, and a retainer would be more fair to the developer. I’d certainly like to hear more about your experiences with micro-retainers, as you gain more clients with whom you have those kinds of relationships.

Anyway, I still advocate these “micro-retainers” for a number of circumstances, such as:
you’ll just been introduced to the client and you want to test out the working relationship
the client is a jerk and you want to do as little work for them as possible (in that case, you may want to think about firing the client outright. Getting rid of a difficult client is tough in the short-term but pays off richly in the long).
you’re doing work for a friend

The issue is that these micro-retainers aren’t going to generate a lot of cash (which is fine if you’re working for friend), unless the client gives you permission to burn through the hours freely (eventually, you will run out of work to do, though). It’s probably best to at least double your normal hourly rate and round up your tasks to the nearest half hour (within reason, of course). That way, all the little things you do for a client, like project manage and provide feedback to their emails, gets accounted for in the end. It’s also important to note that your availability is worth something to the client (probably a lot, actually).

It’s nice not to have to burn out on a project to make rent, as well as give yourself the ability to count research towards your clients’ workload, both of which work better in a monthly/yearly retainer setup.

http://www.teamlalala.com/blog/2009/01/19/paul-krugman-asks-a-boring-question-seeks-a-boring-answer/

http://www.teamlalala.com/blog/2010/01/01/the-dramatic-decline-of-male-participation-in-the-workforce/

“Once upon a time, the attitude of ‘I need to win or my whole life is ruined’ was the province of gambling addicts.”

It’s not just doctors or even educational debt generally (though the lack of a viable bankruptcy option makes it among the worst), the U.S. is becoming a winner-take-all casino where a few prosper and the vast majority are left to drown in an ocean of debt. It won’t be long before the U.S. is the Northern Hemishpere’s Brazil – a few rich, with the masses barely scraping by and unable to save, invest, or get ahead.

Marketing coffee would be harder, and less profitable. So many companies produce it, who would profit directly? It has the ring of a home remedy, which doctors these days try very hard to steer us away from, towards prescription drugs. Home remedies don’t bring in profit and are hopelessly out of style besides.

Can you explain what “64*7sizes*4types*4extensions = 7168 results” means?

Thanks!