This touches on a question I have been chewing on. I've recently started doing contract work. I'm not doing code-monkey contracting; my projects have all required some requirements analysis and design outlines before a reasonable estimate is even possible. Do you normally bill for that kind of work? On the one had it feels wrong to have a client ask for an estimate and then bill him for 10-20 hours of work, on the other hand that's 10-20 hours I could have been billing another job (in theory, anyway).