As a guy who's making the transition between newbie freelancer and professional go-to guy, here are some things that worked for me: 1. Prove to yourself that y

As a guy who's making the transition between newbie freelancer and professional go-to guy, here are some things that worked for me: 1. Prove to yourself that you can deliver by building at least one site that you're happy with. 2. Go for the most popular language that you know. PHP, Python, Ruby, and Java are good starting points. 3. No one's going to come to your house to offer you a job. Go out there and market yourself. Every month there's a freelancer thread on Hacker News. Post there. 4. How much you should be getting depends heavily on your level of skill, and your location. But it's definitely going to be more than $12/hr, easily. I highly recommend charging per project, instead of per hour.