# Jonathan Stark

> Jonathan Stark teaches freelancers, consultants, and other independent professionals how to make more money and work fewer hours without hiring employees — primarily by replacing hourly billing with value-based pricing, sharpening positioning, and improving proposals and sales conversations.

Jonathan was a software consultant for ~15 years, has written five books, and has advised hundreds of independent professionals on pricing and positioning. All written content on this site is in Jonathan's own voice (no ghostwriting/guest content), and case studies are anonymized.

Every page on this site is also available as clean plain-text Markdown: append `.md` to any URL path (e.g. `/hbin` → `/hbin.md`) to fetch the raw source instead of the rendered HTML page. This is the preferred way to ingest content from this site.

## Start Here

- [Homepage](https://jonathanstark.com/): Overview of the core problem (billing hours caps your income) and the three ways to get help
- [Daily List](https://jonathanstark.com/daily): Free daily email newsletter on pricing, positioning, proposals, and selling expertise — the primary top-of-funnel content, running since 2016
- [Free Resources](https://jonathanstark.com/free): Index of free tools, PDFs, webinars, and most popular articles
- [Products + Services](https://jonathanstark.com/ps): Full catalog of coaching, community, workshops, and books

## Core Ideas / Cornerstone Articles

- [How I Realized That Hourly Billing Is Nuts](https://jonathanstark.com/how-i-realized-that-hourly-billing-is-nuts)
- [The Moral Dilemma of Hourly Billing](https://jonathanstark.com/the-moral-dilemma-of-hourly-billing)
- [Trust Fractures: How Hourly Billing Hurts Software Projects](https://jonathanstark.com/trust-fractures-how-hourly-billing-hurts-software-projects)
- [Hourly Billing Prevents Growth](https://jonathanstark.com/hourly-billing-prevents-growth)
- [7 Thoughts on Value Pricing for Software Projects](https://jonathanstark.com/7-thoughts-on-value-pricing-for-software-projects)
- [The Benefits of Pigeonholing](https://jonathanstark.com/the-benefits-of-pigeonholing)
- [100% Up-Front](https://jonathanstark.com/100-percent-up-front)
- [How To Prevent Scope Creep](https://jonathanstark.com/how-to-prevent-scope-creep)
- [The Cab Ride](https://jonathanstark.com/the-cab-ride)

## Books

- [Hourly Billing Is Nuts](https://jonathanstark.com/hbin): Essays on the insanity of trading time for money
- [Learn Your Lines](https://jonathanstark.com/lyl): What to say when clients put you on the spot about rates, discounts, and deadlines
- [Pigeonhole Yourself](https://jonathanstark.com/py): 21 real-world positioning examples
- [The Freelancer's Roadmap](https://jonathanstark.com/tfr): Transforming from commodity freelancer to in-demand consultant
- [How To Build Your First Productized Service](https://jonathanstark.com/fps): Step-by-step guide to productizing expertise

## Coaching & Community

- [1-on-1 Private Coaching Program](https://jonathanstark.com/coaching)
- [Private Pricing Sprint](https://jonathanstark.com/private-pricing-sprint)
- [Private Backchannel Mentoring](https://jonathanstark.com/backchannel)
- [Hotfix](https://jonathanstark.com/hotfix)
- [Ditcherville Community](https://jonathanstark.com/group): Coaching membership community with live Q&A and searchable archive

## Workshops

- [Workshops index](https://jonathanstark.com/workshops)
- [The Pricing Seminar](https://jonathanstark.com/workshops/tps/): 12-week guided value-pricing workshop
- [Email365](https://jonathanstark.com/workshops/e365/): 5-day publishing/authority workshop
- [5-Day Podcast Challenge](https://jonathanstark.com/workshops/5dpc/)
- [10-Day Systems Challenge](https://jonathanstark.com/workshops/10dsc/)
- [Automatic Proposals](https://jonathanstark.com/workshops/ap/)

## Free Tools & Downloads

- [5-Page Proposal Template](https://jonathanstark.com/5-page-proposal-template)
- [Value Pricing Calculator](https://jonathanstark.com/vpc/)
- [Value Pricing Bootcamp](https://jonathanstark.com/vpb): Free 6-day email course
- [Best Of: Pricing Professional Services](https://jonathanstark.com/best-of-pricing) (PDF)
- [Best Of: Positioning for Consultants](https://jonathanstark.com/best-of-positioning) (PDF)
- [Best Of: The Why Conversation](https://jonathanstark.com/best-of-why-conversation) (PDF)

## Other

- [Ditcherville Webcomic](https://jonathanstark.com/ditcherville): Weekly comic on consulting, pricing, and client management (300+ strips)
- [Ask Jonathan](https://jonathanstark.com/ask): Searchable Q&A tool over the daily email archive
- [Daily List Archive](https://jonathanstark.com/archive): Full archive of every daily email since 2016
- [Press / About](https://jonathanstark.com/press): Background, bio, and podcast guesting info
- [Testimonials](https://jonathanstark.com/testimonials)

## Full Index

For a complete, machine-readable list of every page on the site, see [/sitemap.xml](https://jonathanstark.com/sitemap.xml).