When I was a consultant (2003-2006), I billed at $60/hour. Three years ago, I launched a website that I had built in my free time to make some extra bucks. When it started eating up my time (and making more money per month than I had ever made consulting), I had to increased my rates to $90/hr. I informed them of why the increase, and they didn't even flinch (I was expecting them to negotiate), and all was well until (several months later) I simply didn't have time and went full-time to my "side project", which was now generating double what I was bringing it for consulting, and sucking up all my time.
Maybe once or twice a year I get a call from some of my former clients asking if I'm looking for work, and I always have to turn them down. Since quitting consulting, I've had a few meetings where I would possibly do some side-work for a potential new client, but they all wanted long-term commitments, and I simply couldn't commit to a long-term thing.
That's my consulting story. I don't actually know what it's like to be a consultant in "today's economy" and I'm sure that was the point of the question, but I thought I'd throw in my two cents.
For the answer to these and other exciting questions, you can click on peoples' usernames to see their profile. Often they handily include links to, e.g., the MMORPG guild hosting website they manage.
[Edit for clarification: I'm getting modded down so I assume someone read the above as snarky. That was not my intention. It was intended to directly answer the question and provide him and other readers self-help via a non-obvious feature of this website that is only discoverable through verbal lore.]
Maybe once or twice a year I get a call from some of my former clients asking if I'm looking for work, and I always have to turn them down. Since quitting consulting, I've had a few meetings where I would possibly do some side-work for a potential new client, but they all wanted long-term commitments, and I simply couldn't commit to a long-term thing.
That's my consulting story. I don't actually know what it's like to be a consultant in "today's economy" and I'm sure that was the point of the question, but I thought I'd throw in my two cents.