You can negotiate with your friend. You have more experience in general than when you started, and you have more experience with this client. Just keep in mind

You can negotiate with your friend. You have more experience in general than when you started, and you have more experience with this client. Just keep in mind that if you negotiate, a couple of important "rules" will tend to set practical boundaries: 1. you will have a hard time asking for more than "market value" for your skill level for your programming language in your area, from ANYONE (your friend or client) unless you can differentiate your service 2. if you want your friend to pay you more than the customer is even paying him...guess what... you are really asking your friend to negotiate a higher rate with the customer... so you need to provide the justification and arguments your friend will use to dramatically increase the billing rate This is possible to do. I've negotiated big increases in the past. But you need to understand what your skills are worth in the market. You will also find that if you spend time finding new clients yourself, that activity takes times to do. So if your friend has a lot of connections, you may want to consider preserving that relationship if you don't want to worry about the business side.