I am in a baby name group on Facebook and have seen someone comment their name consultant website under people’s posts. After seeing their comments a handful of times I got curious about what a baby name consultant might pick for us based on my and my husband’s criteria. I was a little shell shocked when i saw one of the packages on their website is $700?! 
I’m all for self-employed folks charging what their services are worth and I know that time goes into these things, but I also felt like people on Nameberry have provided me with more feedback than what the $700 package listed (10-15 girl names, 10-15 boy names; $350 for 10-15 of just one gender) but for free. Then it made me wonder if any of you on here are professional name consultants who charge clients fees but then just hop in here for fun? [name_f]Do[/name_f] you think charging that much for name feedback is warranted or a bit of a reach?
I’m no expert in “professional name consulting”, but that’s definitely a rip-off. 10 to 15 names for 350 dollars? Absolutely not. I don’t know if there are any “professionals” on Nameberry, but this community’s help is way better than forking over hundreds of dollars for only a handful of names, even if a ton or research has gone into compiling a list that meets your criteria. Heck, I could probably give you 50 name recommendations right now if you wanted me to- and that’s for free. I know nothing of the business, but if I were a baby name consultant, I’d charge between 50 to maybe 100 dollars per client, and even that’s pushing it. This may be my opinion, but I honestly don’t see the purpose in paying for a service that you can otherwise get online for much the same quality at little to zero cost. Also, who determines a professional from an amateur in this type of field? What makes their consultant website any more valuable or credible from us forum users? I just don’t get it.
TL; DR: paying hundreds of dollars for a couple dozen names isn’t worth it.
There’s a pretty popular “name consultant” I follow and once a couple years ago when we were trying to pick a name for our first I DMed her a question… basically along the lines of “which name should we go with - X or Y?” And all she would reply with was her saying I could go to her website and pay for her advice. That really put a bad taste in my mouth. I get that you’re not going to give away too much for free when that’s your main source of income, but come on. I’m not going to pay hundreds of dollars just for you to give me your opinion between two names, and I would’ve been much more likely to consider paying for her service if she had been friendly and had a conversation with me about her opinion.
Its on my list of things to look into as a potential side hustle at some point but I’m not currently a name consultant and don’t know much about what a competitive rate for that would be. [name_f]My[/name_f] thoughts are that if they were giving you detailed research and write ups about each name I can see it getting pretty steep. If each name took about an hour to fully research and write at a rate of 10-15$ an hour (which is higher than federal minimum wage but lower than mimimum wage in some states) that would get pretty high, in the ballpark of the 350$ number being for the full boys and girls package, but absolutely not 700$. I would expect much more than just a list of 10 names for that price no matter how thorough the research was.
I can see a consultant being helpful if you have a complex situation like needing to negotiate middle ground between people who can’t agree on anything, if you have really specific criteria and are way too busy to be able to sit down and do the research yourself, or the daunting amount of name related stuff on the internet is too overwhelming and anxiety inducing on top of everything else you have worry about that it’s worth the money to outsource it, but for the most part you can get good suggestions and advice for free on forums if you’re willing and able to put in a bit of extra work to do your own additional research and wade through 30 people’s conflicting opinions and half a dozen different websites.
I’m willing to wager a guess that anyone who makes money off of giving name advice doesn’t also come and give their opinions for free. It likely wouldn’t be fun to them anymore, because it would just be work.