Every consultant knows the pick-your-brain problem. Your inbox fills with people who want just fifteen minutes — founders wanting a gut check, ex-colleagues with a quick question, LinkedIn connections who saw your post. Say yes to all of them and you've donated a workweek every month. Say no and you feel like a jerk — and occasionally turn away someone who'd have become a real client. The standard toolkit doesn't help: Calendly gives them your calendar but not a price, invoices arrive after the value's been delivered, and free discovery calls select for people who like free calls.
What consultants sell on Cheddify
Cheddify makes price the filter. One link in your LinkedIn bio, email signature, or newsletter footer; anyone who taps it pays before they get your time.
- Per-minute advisory calls — toggle yourself available and take calls at your rate with the meter running. A founder with an urgent pricing question pays your rate, gets 22 minutes, and is billed for exactly 22 minutes. No proposal, no invoice, no scope discussion.
- Booked strategy sessions — 45- or 60-minute prepaid slots for deeper work: a marketing teardown, a fundraising-deck review, a hiring-plan working session.
- Fixed-price blocks — a 30-minute contract review or a resume-and-LinkedIn audit at a flat price, so buyers know the total up front.
- Paid DMs — the quick question, priced. Someone who doesn't need a call sends the question with payment attached; you answer on your schedule. Details in how paid DMs work.
The elegant side effect: paid intro calls are better lead qualification than free ones. Someone who pays $150 to talk to you is a serious prospect for the $15,000 engagement.
What consultants charge
Consultants on per-minute platforms commonly charge $3 to $10 per minute. Generalist business and career advice clusters near $3–$5 per minute (roughly $180–$300 per hour, in line with mid-market consulting rates); specialized, high-stakes expertise — fractional-executive counsel, technical due diligence, legal-adjacent or regulatory guidance, niche industry knowledge — supports $6–$10 and up. If your day rate implies more than $10 a minute, per-minute calls become your accessible tier rather than your main offer, and that's fine. Start near your effective hourly rate divided by 60, with a 15-minute minimum so small questions still clear a worthwhile floor.
The math on a real call
A 30-minute advisory call at $5 per minute is $150. The buyer pays about 3% card processing on top of that — it doesn't come out of your side. Cheddify's fee is 20% plus $2 per call: 20% of $150 is $30, plus $2, so $32. You keep $118. Payouts land via Stripe. Full numbers on pricing.
Buyers pay as guests in the browser — no account, no app, no procurement dance. For the it-can't-wait question, that immediacy is the product: they tap your link while you're available and you're on a call in under a minute.
Compared to the usual stack
Calendly schedules; it doesn't gate. Zoom hosts; it doesn't bill. Cheddify owns the whole transaction — payment, call, meter, payout — in one system. If you're weighing options, see Cheddify vs Calendly, our guide to paid-call setups, or Minnect alternatives if you've tried expert-marketplace apps.
The honest part
Cheddify brings you zero clients. There's no marketplace and no directory — your link converts demand you already generate: your LinkedIn following, your newsletter, your referrals, your conference talks. If nobody is currently asking for your time, an expert marketplace that supplies askers is a better fit. Cheddify is for consultants whose problem is too much unpriced demand, not too little.