Consulting Rates vs. Product Income: Which Makes More Long-Term?

I get this question a lot: "Should I keep raising my consulting rates, or is the real money in products?"

It's the wrong question. The right question is: which model fits the life you're trying to build?

But since most people asking want real numbers and honest comparisons, I'll give you both. I ran a consulting practice and a digital product business simultaneously for about two years. Here's what I found.

The Consulting Income Model

When I was doing consulting full-time, I was billing between $150 and $200 an hour for content strategy work. On a 25-hour billable week, that's $3,750–$5,000 per week, or roughly $15,000–$20,000 per month before taxes.

Good money. Serious money. And I earned every dollar of it.

The economics of consulting are simple: more hours × higher rates = more income. To increase revenue, you either bill more hours or raise your rates. That's it.

The ceiling on both is real. There are only so many billable hours in a week before you burn out or your work quality declines. And raising rates only works up to what the market will bear — at some point, clients choose a cheaper alternative.

What consulting does well:

• Predictable income when you have regular clients
• High hourly rates relative to most digital product prices
• Immediate feedback from real clients working through real problems
• Clear skill-building through varied client challenges

What consulting does poorly:

• Doesn't scale without hiring people
• Revenue stops when you stop working
• No ownership asset — you can't sell "a consulting practice" for much
• Demanding emotionally and logistically

The Product Income Model

My product revenue in the first year was embarrassingly low: $4,800 for the year. That's around $400/month, which doesn't impress anyone.

But product income compounds in a way consulting income doesn't.

Year two: $31,000. Year three: $74,000. The growth curve is steep once you get past the initial traction phase.

The economics of products are different: you invest time upfront to create something, and then revenue flows from that asset indefinitely without proportional time input. A guide I wrote 18 months ago still sells every week. I haven't touched it in a year.

What products do well:

• Scales without your time after initial creation
• Builds an asset with real value (you can sell the catalog)
• Income is passive once distribution is established
• Low marginal cost per sale
• Compounds over time as SEO traffic and catalog grow

What products do poorly:

• Slow start — first 6–12 months are typically low revenue
• Requires traffic infrastructure (SEO, audience, email list)
• More competitive than a specialized consulting niche
• Requires product management and maintenance

The Year-by-Year Comparison

Let me put real numbers to both models for a context I know:

Consulting: $175/hr average rate, 20 billable hours/week = $182,000/year. But that requires active work every week of the year.

Products, Year 1: $4,800 (mostly validation, not scale) Products, Year 2: $31,000 (first organic traffic, first email list) Products, Year 3: $74,000 (traffic compounding, second product) Products, Year 4: $122,000 (full catalog, some affiliate income added)

By year four, product income exceeds what consulting income would have been in that same year — and product income doesn't require 20 billable hours per week.

The crossover is real. But the patience it requires is also real. Most people abandon the product path somewhere in year one, when income is low and the work is hard and there's no guarantee it will ever amount to anything.

The Hybrid Model Nobody Talks About

Here's what I'd tell myself if I was starting over: don't choose. Run both for a defined period.

Consulting funds the product-building years. Every client hour pays for the time I couldn't bill while writing guides, building SEO, and growing a list. The consulting income is real; it keeps the lights on while the product income is getting started.

Once product income crosses 50% of my monthly needs, I can start reducing client load without financial risk. That's the milestone I used — and it happened at around month 22 of running both.

The hybrid model is slower than going all-in on products, but it's survivable. And survivable is what matters when you're building something with a long ramp.

What I Choose

If I were choosing from scratch today, knowing what I know: products.

Not because consulting is bad — I had years of great consulting work. But because products give me something consulting never could: time. The evenings and weekends that used to be billable hours are now mine. The income arrives whether I'm working or not.

The setup for that future is MadeThis — it's the platform I use to host and sell my products. Simple checkout, no transaction fees, instant delivery. I spent too long with platforms that took big cuts or created friction in the buying process. Once I moved, I stopped thinking about the platform and started thinking about the products.

For the longer story of how I made the actual transition, read my honest transition story from client work to digital products.

Consulting and products aren't enemies. But they have very different long-term curves. Run the math on your own numbers and decide which curve you want to be riding in five years.

Then start building toward it. MadeThis makes the product side of that equation easy to start — no long setup, no technical overhead, just your knowledge and a buyer who needs it.