When do you ask a friend to pay for advice and help?

It's difficult sorting out how much to help friends and when to be professional.

If you want to offer only professional, paid help, you might say: 'I'll give you advice over dinner and half a day tomorrow morning. But I'd like half a day, say tomorrow afternoon, to relax. If you seriously want me to spend a whole day working professionally on this project, my rates are ....'

If I have a good friend I'm always glad to give advice and help, especially if they do other things for me or I love their company.

I like to be in on the start of a project. Sometimes you don't want to pay out until you are sure you have a viable business. First want to know if a friend can really carry through, doing their share, giving it time, getting things done.

If a project takes off and makes money, some time later you can start discussing whether another project started from scratch as a joint venture. That could make money for both of you.

I've heard of people who write to authors and say, here's my idea for a book. You write it and we'll go fifty-fifty on the profits. But the writing is the work. So the writer writes back, 'How about I give you one of my ideas and you write it and we go fifty fifty?' The other person never replies.

It also depends on personality type. Some people are 'nurturers'. They love helping.

Normally I'd help friends for free and charge strangers. Assuming that I have enough income to live on.

People may ask you to work for nothing when they are fund-raising for charity or running community projects. If you are retired and looking for something to do, that's lovely.

But people can't take up your working day when you could be doing other work to earn a living. You simply have to say, 'I need to work between 9 and 5 to pay my bills. I'll see you in the evening or at the weekend.'