patio11 has solid advice. I do B2B contract work (I don't interact with the end client) and have noticed, however, that many of the small web shops that need "h

patio11 has solid advice. I do B2B contract work (I don't interact with the end client) and have noticed, however, that many of the small web shops that need "help" have a hard time paying you anything good because they've already charged the client 25k for a website and that gets diluted as they take a cut to pay for their expenses. I've found my niche contracting for other freelancers (particularly designers) who are willing to pay more because they don't have four other employees and related business expenses to care for with that income. What has been said about "charge more" holds true as well, I heard it a lot before I started but couldn't figure out "how" to charge more (confidence thing). One fine day I had a fellow approach me and said his budget was x, I told him if he doubled it he would have my minimum rate. He said it was a bit high for him and that we would stay in touch; two weeks later he came calling and met my rate. He was also one of the many "good" clients I've had. High-quality and fairly priced (for you) work just tastes better... Oh, and as a rule whatever your initial time "estimate" is, double it and you will get a more accurate number (works consistently for me). Avoid any clients that want "a Groupon website built using Joomla but with a custom shopping cart done in three weeks with a budget of four grand. Oh, we also want to be making money the day of launch in three weeks." (true story) If you build it well and test it well, the project won't nag you long into the future. It will be done when you are done; I can't stress that enough either. Kind of goes hand-in-hand with the high-quality thing. Be sure you handle taxes properly too, since I'm a sole-proprietorship I just have a business savings account that I stuff what I withhold. I also keep track of all the things that I can claim as an expense. (this is the end, I promise) You should also have a way of organizing and tracking your projects; I use heavily customized templates for projects in Emacs org-mode. I write up quotes using it and I also write up the requirements, sprints, payment schedule, backlog, notes, etc... using a project template. I can track my time with it, how much they've paid to-date, and invoice them. Whatever you use, have a system for tracking and organizing the non-code related material of a project. Good luck!