I provide consulting to purveyors of unsolicited commercial e-mail and phone calls (known as spam and telemarketing respectively). Said consulting is normally form rather than content based, and a company is considered to be a client immediately upon my receipt of e-mail or phone calls of this type.
Failure to pay (which means that I don't have the money, regardless of excuses) within one month from date of mail sending will result in referral to a collection agency.
E-mail consulting is invoiced at a rate of $500 + $.1/byte Canadian funds. It should be noted that this gives a much higher price, in general, than phone consultation, and this is for two primary reasons:
My e-mail consulting generally involves a lot of grammar and spelling corrections. While my own grammar and spelling are not always perfect, at least I generally know how to fix it. Apparently, it is not worth people's time to proofread when sending out a commercial message (which is weird, since their livelihood is, in theory, riding on this to some extent), so I do it for them. I also provide layout and netiquette based consulting. Of course, by it's nature spam cannot conform fully to netiquette, but there are certainly better and worse examples (binary in mail, for example, is worse).
Phone Consulting is invoiced at a rate of $500 + $1/minute of the conversation. Consultation generally involves ideas on how to direct speech patterns to achieve more effective results, as I have informal training in Neuro-Linguistic Programming. I also make suggestions as how to telemarket in as pleasant a way as possible, as most tend to be quite rude. Grammar and pronounciation mistakes are also corrected as appropriate.
This is more for my own reference than anything else, but here it is:
===INVOICE FOR SERVICES RENDERED=== Thank you for making use of Robin Powell's Consulting Services! I hope that you have found my commentary on your #type useful and informative. You have been billed at my standard rates, please see my web page (http://www.csclub.uwaterloo.ca/u/rlpowell/consult.html) for more information. Your #type was #n #units long. You owe me #amount, payable in Canadian funds (if payment is not in Canadian funds, add a 10% conversion charge). Payment may be made by cheque, money order, or cash, mailed to the address below. I accept no responsibiltity whatsoever for cheques lost or cash stolen in the mail, and will treat them as though they were never sent. Payment may also be made by bank wire or direct deposit, at your expense, contact me by e-mail or phone for my bank account information. Billing Address --------------- Robin Powell 137 Day Av. Toronto, ON M6E 3W4 Please make cheques out to Robin Powell. Other Forms of Contact ---------------------- E-Mail: rlpowell@csclub.uwaterloo.ca Thank you, and have a nice day! ===END OF INVOICE===
Thank you for choosing Robin Powell's Consulting Services as a destination for your unsolicited commercial e-mail. My commentary is interspersed with a copy of your mail below, and an invoice follows that.
The things beggining with '#' above are things to be replaced. #type is (e-mail|phone call), #n is a number, #units is (minutes|bytes), #amount is obvious.