My biggest piece of advice is to always work on new and interesting things. The money/career will come from that. This is absolutely true and excellent advice.

My biggest piece of advice is to always work on new and interesting things. The money/career will come from that. This is absolutely true and excellent advice. It applies, often, even if the thing you're working on has no immediate practical application. I've spent 18 years making drama films in computer games. As a result, I built a reasonably successful .com which I then sold, I've traveled all over the world, and I have both a primary and ancilliary skillset which people are interested in spending significant chunks of money to gain access to. The only addition I'd make to the advice is this: Tell People About It. Doing fascinating work and never talking about it works significantly less well. Work with people, post your creations on HN, start a blog, and generally talk to people about what you've done.