Abandoned and half-finished projects are an opportunity. My freelancing practice is largely built on taking over these projects. Rarely I have to start over fr

Abandoned and half-finished projects are an opportunity. My freelancing practice is largely built on taking over these projects. Rarely I have to start over from scratch, and that's a hard sell to a client who already got burned (and far more likely to fail). Since programmers tend to look down on maintenance work and legacy code -- but also prone to underestimating and then walking away -- plenty of customers are left holding the bag and willing to pay well for someone to fix and finish their projects. When you start fresh with a new project you and the customer commit to a schedule and budget, and each side has expectations that may or may not get spelled out and agreed to. Ground-up development projects have notoriously high failure rates. Contrast with maintenance/legacy work, where you can charge by value, work incrementally to improve the code, and you're a hero every time you make it better.