I have a good relationship with several agents who will pull comps for me for a nominal fee, knowing that I will continue buying from them as I have in the past. 

If you have a great job, other projects, other ambitions, a desire to spend more time with loved ones... the cost is nominal in comparison to losing focus in other areas.If you don't trust your sponsor, then I wouldn't invest.

Due to time constraints I had to chose to either: 1) Charge some nominal fee for my time (to at least weed out people who were not serious) or,2) Tell people I'd only help them IF they have something under contract Since I don't feel like charging people to help them (since I was always helped for free), I reply back that I'll spend time with them after they go under contract with something. 

For example, my company use Landman and Beatty for all their evictions for a nominal fee that gets charged back to the tenant  Indy is an amazing market and a lot of quality connections to be made here.

You may find that the 'favor' and upside for getting a management fee(if any - (favor for a friend may mean you don't get paid that nominal fee, as you are just trying to help) could turn into something you wish you had never done. 

@Dylan Thomas I can see both sides of your situation but my opinion is sometimes the best way to close a deal is giving a nominal win to the seller.

Fortunately, since we already have a relationship of trust, it wasn't too hard to convince them to lend, and they only wanted a nominal interest rate.

It can be a good idea, but difficult to execute in practice, I'd go to a property manager and see if they can draw up a lease for a nominal fee, you'll want specified days and what you will/ will not fix. 

Were you able to build a cheap nominal cost per sqft?

I like to look at deals in terms of nominal FCF, and cash on cash returns...in your case the latter would be infinite assuming the properties cash flow positively since this is no money down...nice!