The problem I've found is that it's hard to bill more than 20-30 hours in a week. A lot of time is spent doing things that aren't billable (meeting with potenti

The problem I've found is that it's hard to bill more than 20-30 hours in a week. A lot of time is spent doing things that aren't billable (meeting with potential clients, going to networking events, etc...), and of the time sitting at my desk "doing work," not all of it is going to be billable (I only charge for the time I actually spend doing work). And the other problem is that there is lag time between two projects, so even when I have a project end, it's almost impossible to time it so that there isn't downtime in between. As a result, I probably end up billing for maybe 20 hours a week (on average). So if I'm billing out at a rate that's twice what I would make per hour at a full-time job (40 hours a week), I end up quite a bit behind. (I have to pay for self-employment taxes, any expenses such as office space etc..., plus any benefits that I give myself). In the end, I'm learning that it's a lot harder to make the economics work out than you would expect. When I had a startup, I looked at the guy who was billing us $140 an hour, and thought he was making bank. In hindsight, I've realized that he was probably doing just fine, but he probably did it because he enjoyed the work and the lifestyle, and not because it was going to make him rich.