A friend of mine just had to start up a consulting division at his company. He had no idea what to pay his consultants, so he asked his business contacts in the industry to help him devise a pay scale. He gave me this data item: a consultant who run a group of about 4 people (including himself), and brings in $2-3 million annually, should be paid about $150k.
So if you assume $3M / (4 x $150) = 5; $2M / (4 x $150) = 3.3. So 3.3-5 is the margin factor. This is a very rough calculation (and in this particular example, we assume one of the 4 consultants is actually more highly paid than others, and the work distribution is not-even, since the supervisor himself does less direct revenue work); and obviously this will vary greatly based on skill, expereince, indsutry (web, enginering, deployment, etc).
Bottom line, don't take this as gospel, but it is a possilbe back of the envelope calculation you can cmpare against.
--Mark
hershey@vaultus.com