Working as a consultant, I’m used to providing suggestions and identifying bottlenecks in businesses. It’s part of the job. I command the rates I do because these clients have seen the results I’ve delivered, understand I very much care about their business, and want them to be as successful as possible.
They have problems or goals for their business and they want me to use my skills and experience to tackle those problems. Since they are paying for my time and trust that I will help make them successful, my opinions and suggestions are taken seriously. They may not always agree with these suggestions, but that’s good because it moves us forward and allows us to further test and analyze these ideas, quantitatively.
However, being used to this kind of process makes things very different in other areas of my life. I regularly visit developer communities online to see what’s going on and seek out interesting questions people have. And after all this time, I’ve found most of the people who go online looking for “suggestions/advice” really aren’t looking for suggestions.