Based on statistics, the number of people who are offering high priced consulting services have grown exponentially over the last couple of years. Well, it is not surprising as this endeavor promises huge earnings for the right people. Imagine, you can potentially make up to $100,000 per month as long as you have what it takes to help your clients in reaching their goals or in improving the quality of their lives.

Here’s how you can explode your high priced consulting:

1. Be different. You can easily make a name in this field and easily convince people to do business with you if you know how to set yourself apart from the rest. Check out similar high priced consulting services that are being offered by your leading competitors. Take note of their strengths, major selling points, and weaknesses. Keep these in mind when designing your own offerings. Make sure that you offer products and services that your clients will not possibly find elsewhere. Also, make sure that your consulting services are far better and more useful compare to your competitors’.

2. Active listening. Your clients will surely appreciate it if you can offer them as much time as they need especially when they talk about their problems or the reasons why they signed up to your services. Make sure that you give them your undivided attention to make them feel valued. Do not simply hear what they are saying instead, strive to listen actively. Try to digest everything that they are trying to get across to get a clear picture of their situation.

3. Keep your clients on the loop. You need to involve these people on all phases of your consulting program. After getting them to tell you their problems or the things that they would like to have some improvements on, involve them when making your action plans. Working hand in hand with your clients in looking for the best solutions can surely produce a great outcome.

4. Share your knowledge. Don’t hesitate to offer everything you know to your clients. There are some consultants who are not willing to share every piece of information they have because they fear that these will be distributed to other people and will lead to losing their prospects’ businesses. Well, this is not the best route to go if you want to impress your clients and give them their money’s worth, right?

There are a zillion good reasons to set up shop as a consultant or freelancer. Let’s start with four of them.

1. Earn money.

Well, duh. Everyone works to make money, right? But this is more of a driver for some people than others. Some people are content to pursue their interests-or “passion”-and wouldn’t mind earning a few bucks for their trouble. That’s totally valid but so is going for the gold . . . or at least the silver.

If this is your primary goal, recognize that freelancing and consulting tend to pay substantially more per hour than corporate employment. Taking low-paying assignments at the beginning may be quite acceptable as you get your feet wet, create a portfolio, assemble references and testimonials, learn from your peers and clients, and simply build up the courage to ask for more money. However, over time you will want to identify and go after the services, industries and customers that pay well.

But note the financial downside to freelancing and consulting. While ongoing, effective marketing and customer satisfaction will help generate a more dependable income, self-employment is rarely as consistent as a corporate paycheck. (On the other hand, a full-time employer can terminate you without warning and there you are with all your eggs in a single broken basket.)

2. Create immediate employment.

By dinner tonight, you can honestly say you are employed. Start outlining your marketing program or phone a contact or two and you’re in business!

This doesn’t mean you will have any clients by 5 p.m. Nor will you have any income … yet. Still, marketing is intrinsic to consulting / freelancing. It’s real work for better (yes, you have a job!) or worse (it takes effort that may not pay off immediately!).

3. Create a continuous work history and eliminate periods of unemployment.

If you continue to look for a corporate job, you need a traditional resume. And a resume is reviewed with suspicion if it doesn’t clearly present an uninterrupted work history.

Forming your own solo professional practice fills in the current employment gap to show career continuity. Instead of listing a variety of temp assignments, freelance gigs, part-time jobs and volunteer activities as separate jobs, give them a single heading. Then bullet your achievements below.

4. Explore and expand career interests.

It’s incredible but true: People will pay you to do things as an independent that they would never find you qualified to do as an employee.

This, sadly, is counterintuitive. The large company has executives, supervisors and coworkers, assembled in scads of meetings and extensive review chains, to train and oversee workers. Whenever you have a question, there’s someone nearby to ask. You also have access to professional subscriptions, seminars, expensive equipment and lots of other stuff paid for by someone else.

Corporate job postings tend to be highly rigid and demanding, requesting individuals with five years of experience doing the exact same work as the position being filled.

On the other hand, the prospects you phone will propose freelance /consulting opportunities substantially different from anything you have ever done in the past. You will be presented with assignments for which your qualifications are moderate, even questionable. You’ll offer your services to design thingamabobs, and they’ll ask if you can design thingamajigs. Even if you are honest and say, “Thingamabob design is my greater strength, but I’d be interested in working under your guidance on the thingamajig,” they may well give you the opportunity.

Or you can identify in advance an area into which you would like to expand. I’ve tried spin-off specialties by detailing how my qualifications in one area relate to my new target assignment.

Guess the most important characteristic of corporate employers is a fear of commitment. They’d rather allow freelancers and consultants to try new specialties than hire full-timers for the same type of career switch. That may be because even though the temp assignment may last for months, it doesn’t last forever. Their decision isn’t irrevocable. As if they aren’t ready to dump loyal employees in a heartbeat.

More and more people are now moving their cheese and trying their luck in the consulting industry. Aside from the fact that this is such a rewarding and relatively easy job, it’s also very lucrative. Depending on the niche that you are targeting and the kind of consulting service that you are offering, you can charge your clients as much as $12,000 per project.

Here’s how your can dominate the consulting industry:

1. Learn from the experts. Don’t simply sink your teeth into this endeavor. If you want to increase your chances of making it big in this field, you will need to find ways as to how you can get in-depth information or better yet, insider tips as to how consulting really works. Good thing there are successful consultants from all points of the globe who are now offering what they know through their coaching programs or online classes. Although you will need to shell out thousands of dollars to take advantage of these information base products, you can be assured that they’ll help you get started on the right foot.

2. Know your clients. This is one of the keys to succeed in this field. Even before you work with your clients, I recommend that you do your research and get as much information about them. These information can help you make your consulting services more focused and highly targeted. You may opt to have personal conversation with them by calling them up or you can encourage them to maintain an ongoing communication with you either through your blog or through your website.

3. Active listening. Keep in mind that the words of your clients are much important than yours. Be willing to give these people ample time to talk and practice active listening. You can jot down notes and ask questions from time to time but do not interrupt them frequently so they can focus. Acknowledge the ideas that they raise to make them feel valued.

4. Probe. If you think that your clients are not really giving you a clear picture about their problems or the things that they are going through, feel free to probe. The key here is asking questions that will get these people to really open up. Use open-ended questions all the time. Also, make sure that your questions are really short, succinct, and easy to understand. You wouldn’t want to cause confusion, would you?

Businesses are always looking for ways to make more money. By providing these companies with options for increasing their revenues, you can begin to create a lucrative consulting business offering solutions to problems for other businesses. Here’s 3 ways to make money as a consultant:

1. Offer personalized service – One great way to do this is to have some knowledge of the challenges of a company. How do you get knowledge? You research the company. Start with the information available on their website. Find out the key managers in which you can speak with or email. If you have friends that work for large corporations, engage them in conversation. One thing is for certain, employees are always willing to complain. Look at this as first hand research. Gather as much information about the particular problem and propose a solution to present to the company. Be ready to present them with a killer personalized presentation upon your first call to gain an appointment.

2. Choose a specific industry of field – As a consultant, you want to make sure your portfolio makes sense. If your entire professional career has been in the airline industry, then to attempt to gain a client whose business is designer shoes would not be reasonable. For example, I have over ten years of experience in the warehouse/logistics industry. The majority of my clients are in this industry because I have a working knowledge of their challenges and can “speak their language”. Plus, they feel more comfortable with me presenting ideas to them and are more open to listening than not.

3. Advertise your business and offer incentives – How will clients know about your business if you do not advertise? This is a primary facet of being a consultant. You will need to let companies know that you exist and are open for business. Network with friends and associated provide word of mouth advertising. However, you will also need to do some ground work as well. Establish yourself legally as an official business (research different organizational structures) and get your business cards and website ready. Be sure to include your previous experience, former clients, and success stories on your website. Offer discounts for contract consulting and referrals of other clients.

You can easily make money being a consultant by utilizing the above 3 steps. However, there are more ways that are not covered here. The key is to go out of your way to offer the best services possible for the money you are paid.