I've been able to scale consulting to about 20-35k / mo as a single developer.I've gotten all of my clients through word-of-mouth and I've spend zero dollars in marketing. The trick being that I always try to do the best work and communicate instantly with my clients. I.e, if a client e-mails me, or sends me a text, I respond in about one second. They seem to love that.
I try to be as honest and forthcoming with each client and I've basically hit a cap now in being able to add any new ones and deliver the experience I want to each client. Scaling is the most difficult part for me right now since all my clients are quite varied. Some of them are web apps, other mobile apps and others just pure cybersecurity. They're so vastly different from each other that it's a bit difficult to hire someone who can handle the diverse amount of work. Also, I think for the amount of work I do, I should probably have much bigger retainers, so some clients are $1,250 / month, but jesus is that hard. It should probably be at least $5,000 /month.
For me tho, I've learned so much about business and my technical skills have skyrocketed. I honestly feel like I can tackle any problem in the world and it's a powerful feeling. I make decisions based on the problem its self and have no loyalty really to a specific technology. I understand why a client may want to use WordPress and why a client may want to use Kubernetes. Some clients want to just do servers using Linux and that's okay. I've learned that more basic technology (like bash) can be hugely beneficial to trying to write your own solution. When you're under time constraints, you start to have some pretty creative solutions, and not the creative where it breaks later, the creative where it does exactly what it needs to do, but it's done in 1 hour instead of 1 month.
The best advice I could give is to basically be brutally honest with each client, do the best work that you can and always reply in a timely manner, regardless of what's happening in your life. So many consulting companies are slow to reply, or don't really care about their clients on a personal level that clients will really love you if you spend time thinking about their business on a personal level, being responsive and just being honest when you're overloaded in work.
It is a stressful business tho and I'm in the alpha stages of a product I'm working on based on the problems I've seen over the years. It'll be interesting to move from consulting to a SaaS product. The transition being the consulting provides the funding to be able to work on the SaaS and then hopefully the recurring revenue outpaces consulting eventually and I live a less stressful life!
My trouble has been that I automate everything and document it so well, that I basically "code myself out of a job."
I also strive for instant response time (my wife hates that) and often, I'll already be working on a client issue that the servers emailed/paged me about by the time the client gets in touch (that definitely impresses them).
So, the typical pattern is this: I meet a new client, understand their needs, build a RESTful API back-end (Python, Django, Terraform, AWS), automate any internal processes and/or build internal tools, and then support their front-end team in building their web/mobile apps that consume the API.
Usually, it's a few days to a couple of weeks of full-time work, and then my hours drop off a cliff: either 1) the client's team takes over completely, or 2) if I stay on, any subsequent feature or issue takes just minutes for me to do, so then I'm back to square one, looking for the next client. So far, I've been lucky enough to make all the clients happy and have them become "clients for life," but that "life," added up between all the existing clients, is just a few billable hours a week.
It sounds like you are doing $10k-$20k jobs in a few days or weeks.
Charge way more than you're charging. If you're successfully building our their entire backend, their internal tools and their automation in a few weeks, you should be charging for a few months instead of a few weeks.
In your case, it sounds like project work is better for you. I wouldn't recommend that you work hourly since that's probably where you're being burned. If you quote a REST API, automation system and internal tools for $10k-$30k and you finish it in 2 weeks, then you're golden and so is the startup since they just saved a lot of time.
I would highly recommend that you get on retainers with your clients. If they appreciate your work, and need help from time-to-time, you shouldn't be charged for 1 hour whenever they need you. They should pay for you to be available for them, so perhaps try to get on $500 - $1000 / month retainers. They may only need you a few times a month, but you're not billing them for $100-$200 for 1 hour of work, what a bad deal for you (and a great deal for them!)
I try to be as honest and forthcoming with each client and I've basically hit a cap now in being able to add any new ones and deliver the experience I want to each client. Scaling is the most difficult part for me right now since all my clients are quite varied. Some of them are web apps, other mobile apps and others just pure cybersecurity. They're so vastly different from each other that it's a bit difficult to hire someone who can handle the diverse amount of work. Also, I think for the amount of work I do, I should probably have much bigger retainers, so some clients are $1,250 / month, but jesus is that hard. It should probably be at least $5,000 /month.
For me tho, I've learned so much about business and my technical skills have skyrocketed. I honestly feel like I can tackle any problem in the world and it's a powerful feeling. I make decisions based on the problem its self and have no loyalty really to a specific technology. I understand why a client may want to use WordPress and why a client may want to use Kubernetes. Some clients want to just do servers using Linux and that's okay. I've learned that more basic technology (like bash) can be hugely beneficial to trying to write your own solution. When you're under time constraints, you start to have some pretty creative solutions, and not the creative where it breaks later, the creative where it does exactly what it needs to do, but it's done in 1 hour instead of 1 month.
The best advice I could give is to basically be brutally honest with each client, do the best work that you can and always reply in a timely manner, regardless of what's happening in your life. So many consulting companies are slow to reply, or don't really care about their clients on a personal level that clients will really love you if you spend time thinking about their business on a personal level, being responsive and just being honest when you're overloaded in work.
It is a stressful business tho and I'm in the alpha stages of a product I'm working on based on the problems I've seen over the years. It'll be interesting to move from consulting to a SaaS product. The transition being the consulting provides the funding to be able to work on the SaaS and then hopefully the recurring revenue outpaces consulting eventually and I live a less stressful life!