Can I talk about WordPress consultants for a moment?

At a marketing meetup in my area, there's a rash of folks that sell WordPress website creation as a service. Folks that tell me, they "slap some themes together from TF and plugins." So, when I say rash, I mean I literally break out in one when I hear how they operate their business.

For example, this defacing happened to a consultant I was talking to. She told me that the client refused to pay for the $18 upgrade to keep the patches coming. The result was the defacing. Of course a business owner is going to say no to a cost they don't understand. It's not their fault, it's the consultant's fault.

If you're consulting with a client on a monthly retainer and you are responsible for their core website technology AND you're not working these license upgrade fees into your monthly nut -- you are doing it wrong.

If you tell me your monthly retainer can't take the impact of premium plugin renewals that you installed and continue to use for your client -- you are doing it wrong.

If you cannot position the cost of annual software fees properly to a business owner -- you're probably positioning WordPress wrong and really doing it wrong.