I pretty much echo what FinanceDude said. Shortly before joining the board I spent $3500 to enroll in Kaplan's online CFP course. The reason for choosing Kaplan was at the advice of a former boss, who moved from advertising, to Intel, to financial planner. She spent a lot more than $3500 a UC Berkeley extension CFP course, failed her CFP test, and than took a Kaplan course. I took one online course,and realized a few things. Despite my many years of investing, MBA, and years of reading about SWR, asset allocation etc.; getting the CFP was going to be hard work, and boring.
I then made a honest reassement and said well maybe the money will be good enough for me to slough through the course, pay for the CFP review session and than take the test, and find someplace to get the necessary work experience in financial planning.
My initial idea was similar to what you and other proposed. I'd a be fee only planner in the mold of the forum and Boglehead and keeping my clients from the folks of Amerprise or Merrill Lynch. I'd meet with a client for an hour collecting information, spend 2-3 hours using software to develop an financial plan, touch on several tax tips that I knew, and refer them to other for life insurance and estate planning (as needed). I figured I could spend 6-8 hours and charge $500.
Sure most of my advice would end up looking like a couch potato portfolio, along with some specific advice how to invest their 401K to minimize their expenses while achieving a good AA. I figured once I explain how the 1.5% ER on mutual funds, or annuity was costing people a few thousand a year on modest 100-200K portfolio they'd be happy to pay $500.
By and large, I think $500 is pretty much the upper limit of what people with modest portfolio will pay maybe millionaire will fork over a 1,000 or $2,000. But by and large people aren't upset with paying 1% when the are earning 10% in a fund. Beside the horrible prospect of having to prospect for clients, the thing that dawned on me was this.
Sure I might find people willing to pay me $500 to tell them in essence to call Vanguard (or Fidelity). However the universe of people who were smart enough to recognize that a small collection of diversified index funds was good, but stupid enough to continue to pay me $500 a year to make minor tweaks to their portfolio was tiny. People are much more willing to spend $8-15K a year like the OP to have some helper put them in 42 funds, than to take my advice which would like be something along this line. "your international exposure is too small sell $12,000 worth of US large Caps, and $5,000 worth of Vanguard Total bonds and move the money into Vanguard international, buy some I-Bonds for your wife if she is planning on getting masters in a few years."
As Warren Buffett said in his letter, activity makes financial helpers look good even if it isn't really good for the clients.
In my case, I realized I couldn't make a living as fee only planner, and I couldn't in good conscious stick friends, and friends of friends into big commission products like annuities. So I dispense advice on the internet for free.