Maintenance contracts can be really hard to manage if you're solo, because they can make it hard for you to throw yourself 100% into a project. Since maintenan

Maintenance contracts can be really hard to manage if you're solo, because they can make it hard for you to throw yourself 100% into a project. Since maintenance contracts are a mixed bag at best, write them in your favor - full price, fixed number of hours, use it or lose it. Then hire or subcontract the work out for some passive income. 5 years ago, my consulting partner and I ran into this situation. We managed it by hiring our first employee. We nailed down $5,000/month of guaranteed maintenance from three customers, and hired a designer/HTML guy. (Much of the maintenance work was simple HTML.) This worked out well for us - two years later, we had five employees and large projects, plus a small steady maintenance stream that was mostly handled by one person.