Based on your experience, don't you think your hourly rate is too low? Or, do you secretly charge by the word?

Like most people, my own perception of my worth doesn't have a price, it is infinite, time is not something I can renew, unlike losing and making money.  That being said, I spend a lot of time with professional peers exchanging value, much of it simple goodwill, with the expectation that they will pass it forward.  As Adam Grant, the author of "Give and Take", so eloquently describes, being generous with time can bring returns well beyond that which was put in, although one cannot expect it and know what that may happen.  So what I charge doesn't reflect my internal value or what the receiving person perceives as the value since like any time-based service, it is what is said, not how long it takes to say it that matters.

With the rate listed on the ECN, it is what I call a "bozo" fee, meaning it easily filters out nonsense callers, or people who would ask me for time but have no intention of passing it forward or having a reciprocal exchange of value.  Normally these are people who are outside of my large network of relationship and I have no easy way of qualifying them through a reputation network.  It the cold caller that the rate for.  I do recognize that people outside of my current network might be interesting to connect with so I want to make it easy for them to act on some interest they have.  If they decide to engage, and I want to work with them on some interesting opportunity, then naturally the rate is no longer time-based, but value based.

The other pricing consideration I made was that the rate is limited, it is only for an initial call.  In an hour it is not sufficient time for anything that is significantly complex or to resolve a problem, so these get reduce to call made to qualify me as an expert.  In effect they are paying for a sales call.  They might ask some specific informational questions or others that help them assess whether I can help them in some way.  Often that help, as it is with many experts, is to help the company understand how to frame the problem they want to solve, and often the solutions become obvious.

So understanding the posted calling rate with the above perspective, one can see that they are paying for me to sell them, it is an access fee, not a consulting fee.