You're not pricing your time. You're pricing access.
The first instinct is to derive the number from your hourly rate. Divide your consulting rate by something — sixty, a hundred — call it a minute-of-attention price. Don't do this. The math is intuitive and wrong.
You're not selling a minute of work. You're selling the right to interrupt you — to put a thoughtful message in front of you that you'll read end-to-end and answer with one sentence. The price isn't payment for that minute; it's a filter that ensures the minute is worth spending.
Anyone can pay for a minute of your time. The point of the price is to make sure they don't waste it.
The three inputs that matter
Build the number from three multipliers, in this order:
- Seniority floor — how much your average correspondent earns. A staff engineer's correspondents are well-funded series-B founders; a junior's are hiring agencies with thin margins. Set the floor at "annoying but not blocking" for the senders you actually want.
- Stack scarcity — Go, Rust, embedded, ML infra, Solidity, niche compliance — anything where supply is small and demand is loud. Multiply the floor by 2–4×.
- Inbound volume — if your GitHub bio already gets you five DMs a week, you have a tolerance problem and need a high price. If you're invisible online, start low so people can find you.
A starting table
Concrete numbers, in reachdev credits (1€ = 10 credits). Adjust up for scarce stacks, down for entry-level:
- 0–2 years experience — 3 to 5 credits (€0.30–€0.50). You're optimizing for volume; you want to read the messages.
- 3–5 years — 5 to 10 credits (€0.50–€1.00). Mid-market for full-time roles. Filters out agencies with bad margins.
- 6–9 years (senior) — 10 to 20 credits (€1–€2). Most senior devs land here. Stops mass-sends, lets serious recruiters and founders through.
- 10+ years (staff / principal / specialist) — 25 to 50 credits (€2.50–€5). Scarce stack? Push to the top of the range.
These are starting points, not absolutes. The right number for you is the one that produces 2–4 high-quality messages a week. Tune from there.
Start at the number that makes you slightly uncomfortable. Then check it weekly.
The two failure modes
Too low. You'll see it within a week: the inbox fills with agency boilerplate, the messages get shorter and less specific, you start ignoring the badge again. The cost wasn't real enough to filter. Double it.
Too high. Subtler — you'll just see silence. Two, three, four weeks with nothing. That doesn't always mean the price is wrong (some weeks are quiet), but if you go a month with zero contacts and your profile traffic is normal, cut the price by a third.
The point is to be visible to thoughtful senders and invisible to lazy ones. Both ends of the bell curve are bad.
Adjustments by situation
- Actively looking for a job — drop the price 30–50%. You want more shots on goal, even if the average quality is lower.
- Happy where you are — raise it. You're not optimizing for volume; you're optimizing for only the very best getting through.
- Niche stack with no inbound — start low until the channel finds you. You can always raise.
- Geography premium — if you're in a SF/NYC/London time zone and the senders are too, you can charge ~30% more than EU-only profiles.
What to do this week
Pick a number from the table above. Set it. Leave it for ten days. Count the messages you get and how many you reply to. If you're below two weekly contacts, cut it by a third. If you're above six and most aren't worth reading, double it.
Two adjustments are usually enough to land somewhere stable. The number will drift up over time as your profile gets known — that's normal, and a sign things are working.
The price isn't a wall. It's a signal. It tells everyone on the other side: I read every message that comes in. Make it count.
