Should I post my consulting rates or just tell people to contact me?

I have an android app that I made and it gets a few downloads here and there. It is a business coaching app. It is pretty helpful, but when people require more involved help, I show them a scree which tells them that they can email me directly for my rates.

Someone told me that I should post my rates on that page of the app. But that seems a little tacky to me.

What is the standard good practice of doing this sort of thing? Should I explicitly state my rates or not? I am new to consulting so I figured it would be $50 per hour of skype to start.

What do you think?

From a sales perspective, posting rates can dequalify prospects without them having to reach out to you. With that said, posting rates helps prospects figure out potential costs before they decide to contact you. Whether you should post rates in the app really depends on whether you're receiving sufficient leads as is and whether you could increase conversion by including the rate in the app.

What's your rationale of not putting rates in the app? I haven't seen our app but do you think it really portrays the unique value-add of your paid consulting service?

Also, you mentioned that the app gets a few downloads here and there. It sounds as though there's not many new people downloading the app. If you don't have a lot of new users downloading the app, assuming conversion rates stay the same (i.e. for every 20 downloads, 1 email contact), the time it takes to receive an email will increase.

Taking a step back, it sounds as though you're using the app, in part, as a marketing channel for new leads. Perhaps it's not the best medium? You may be able to use the app to direct users to a website that's more feature rich. It's easier to showcase your past successes and capabilities on a website than it is on a mobile app. You can also reach a greater audience and perhaps get more leads.

If anything, I don't think there's a hard and fast rule of whether it makes sense to include prices. Some consultants will include their prices while others don't. Many people assume that when prices aren't included, the actual per-hour cost will be pretty high (i.e. "if you have to ask, you can't afford it" mentality). However, if you have establish enough brand value, then you'll be successful even without including the price.

At the same time, including the price isn't necessarily tacky. Including prices helps to weed out prospects but also makes it difficult to change prices (especially up).

hth

I like bangdang's answer.
The way I would personally approach this would be to take a look at the number of queries that I am getting and whether they are worth my time.

For example, if LOTS of people contact me and are shocked or surprised at the rates that I quote, then I would put in a price.

Putting up a price will probably reduce the number of queries that I get IMHO. I ran a consulting company and had different, negotiated prices for each of our clients separately depending on many factors. So I could never put in a fixed price unless I was sure that my rates were the cheapest and that was a competetive advantage.

I think, a good middle ground could be putting in:
"Personal, one on one consultation also available starting at $50 an hour" (or the lowest value that you could charge and be happy)

This could give you the ability to mark it up in the future and at the same time sets an expectation for people contacting you without being tacky.

Don't post rates. It's not an accurate way of measuring anything, for anyone.
Say you work on projects from $500 up to $50,000. No customer will argue with that.

Also, explain the first project you prefer to do a fixed fee so it's safe for everyone to understand what's involved.

Be excellent at developing and defining the scope into a blueprint that makes sense to everyone.