I’ve seen numerous pay for advice/information/consulting sites crop up and have even signed up for a few of them like Ether and Flavorsofa. Never really have promoted or done much business through them though. Since I’m already logged into Skype 24/7 and we use PayPal in our business Bitwine seems like a natural fit to incorporate a pay per minute service.

I signed up for BitWine this morning and was impressed with the hassle-free process, including registering, integrating with the PayPal API (clicking links basically if you are already setup as a business customer with PayPal), downloading and installing the accompanying BitWine taskbar which shown below:

The taskbar which runs the entire space of the bottom of the screen just above the Windows start menu interfaces with Skype and shows your online status in BitWine. You don’t have to run this all the time, as people can search BitWine and schedule appointments.

For example, if you search BitWine for my name, you’ll see my profile and be able to click on the calendar and setup an appointment (shown below).

You can click on my name and see my profile page. With owning and operating multiple businesses I have limited time, so I’m not sure even if there is interest how many of these BitWine calls I’ll be able to do. At the same time I am curious about checking this out in a real world business scenario.

Note to readers: if you would like to chat with me for non-voice/video chat then you are welcome and encouraged to do so free in the comments below (I personally read every published comment at Hmm) and/or stop by our IRC server: irc.scriptschool.com #scriptschool where I regularly hang out. Feel free to park a nick there and hang with our small IRC group. We don’t bite. Well, we don’t bite friendly, non-disruptive netizens anyway. We will bite people who flood or do any other lame IRC stuff. Actually, my biggest complaint with IRC and IM is that people are sometimes very impatient. It’s like they pop in, ask a question, and leave long before we can answer or query both our own or third party resources for a helpful response.

So who/what/where/when would I like to use with BitWine?
Companies or individuals who would like to pick my brain with full, undivided attention and receive technical and/or business advice — or help in finding/building solutions — on web or desktop programming-related topics, running a web-based business, site monetization, webmastering and/or writing/blogging-related topics. These are all activities where I have varying levels of experience and am offering as a pay per minute service through BitWine.

Choosing how much to charge
The per minute rate you set at BitWine needs to be something you can live with for your time spent. I could write volumes on the importance of proper valuation of time but to summarize, don’t sell yourself short. Don’t agree to some lowball rate that you’ll regret or resent when/if somebody actually wants to do business with you. The flipside is not overcharging and overestimating how much your time is really, tangibly worth to others.

How do you find out what your time is worth to others when you’ve never charged anybody by the minute before? Ask people you’ve done business with what seems like a fair rate for your time. They will usually tell you what is too much. You can also look at what others are charging in your area(s) of experience at BitWine and use that as a guide.

If you have experience that can help others, particularly if it’s unique, niche experience, then charge appropriately. If you charge too cheap a rate the perception on the other end will actually work against you. With that said, don’t try to be the most expensive in your area(s) of expertise if you aren’t able to bring the most value to the client per minute.

A cursory search around BitWine displayed rates which ranged from 99 cents per minute up to over $4/minute. If I’m on the paying side of the business and paying $4 per minute I better be receiving information that makes me — or saves me — $12-20/minute and I sincerely doubt very few advisors on BitWine are worth that much. As a general rule, I expect to make or save at least three times what I spend back on any business expense, including advertising.

In my case on the advisor side, I decided it was important to receive at least what clients are currently paying for my custom programming work and then I added a little extra based on the sum of experience in topics other than programming-related which I feel warrants charging a little more. I probably should shave a little off for people actually willing to look at my ugly mug on camera though, shouldn’t I? I’m not sure I’m going to keep the webcam option enabled long term. Nobody really needs to pay to see a geek in real time.

eBay style rating keeps service in check
BitWine has an eBay style rating service where clients and advisors can rate each other. This gets back to making sure your service is priced fairly and that you actually deliver what you promise. Nobody wants negative eBay feedback, so using this style of feedback is a great way to keep the BitWine service reputable.

Using the service?
Since I haven’t actually used the service yet as either a client or advisor I can’t comment on how well the actual process works and invite any commentary below for those who have taken the plunge. I imagine it works similarly to any other Skype video call. Quality on these calls can vary considerably, and it’s good to see that there is a refund option baked into the BitWine Taskbar so that advisors can refund part or all of the amount for any call with quality problems.

I also noticed it’s easy to pause and restart the payment time from reading the client side of things. There is also an initial process where negotiation over the published rate can take place before the actual charging of the time takes place. This would give an advisor the ability to ratched up or down the cost based on other factors. I definitely like that clients can contact the advisor and see if it’s the right match before being charged.

Overall, this service is put together impressively for both the advisor and client side and I look forward to trying it out.

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