Making a living with Dreamweaver; where's the beef?

Circumstances have put me in a situation where I need to put my Internet design/development skills to work as a self-employed person. My previous experience has always been in the corporate cubicle environment. For those of you here who are successfully self employed, where are some good places to look for information about making the right decisions and avoiding the mistakes? I found some highly recommended books for sale at Amazon, but noticed they're written for bricks-and-mortar entrepreneur types, not nerds with a service to offer. Tips?

Murray has offered some good suggestions. Here's a few more:
Register a domain and start a website for your nascent company. Make it as good as you can make it. Get business cards printed and spend a bit of time either getting a logo (having a great designer design it) or by doing it yourself. Find yourself a very good hosting company that answers its tech support phone 24/7 and prepare to set up a VPS with that company. VPSs tend to run $400 - $500 annually, but you can put loads of websites on them and charge the going annual rate for an hosted website for each one, pocketing the profit.
Join your local Chamber of Commerce. Go to Chamber meetups and, especially multi-chamber events. Hand out your business card and follow up. Learn to do a 30 second commercial about yourself and your company and tell people at these meetups exactly what you are looking for (eg: "This week, I'm looking for restaurants that need to put their entire menu on-line so that they can entice more to reserve").
If you don't own a copy of Dreamweaver, get one. Also get a copy of Photoshop. Experiment with your own website. learn to do things faster. I literally live in these two applications and do websites for small businesses.
I would try to learn either one server-side language (that is supported by your hosting company) or one client-side language (which ususally means Javascript) in the next year along with HTML and CSS. Be disciplined about learning new stuff.
Keep good books. I realize that you will find that your earnings are depressing at first and you'll want to not even balance your checkbook. Don't give in to that temptation. Every purchase you make for your business is a tax-deduction. Every mile you drive to see a client is, too. Record everything and keep everything together. See a CPA this fall to set yourself up to save money come tax time in April. You might consider using either Quicken or Quickbooks Pro -- but you should get a categories list from a CPA that you will use next year so that he or she will be prepared for the kinds of things you are spending money on.
Do not do a templated website and then do the same website for every client you come across. Make sure that what you do can be adapted to any kind of look you might want.
Realize that Dreamweaver "plugins" will save you lots of time, but never directly charge a client for one. Any plugin you purchase needs to work for several clients and one client ought not have to pay for the entire purchase, which is supposed to make you faster.
Realize that any technique done in any plugin also lives out there on the Internet. this includes drop-down menus, jQuery effects, image rotators, accordions and so on. The advantage of a plugin is to save you time so, if you are pressed for time, buy what fits your client's needs and try to make it pay you back with the next several clients.
Keep track of your hours spent on each client so that you know how long it takes to do a website. Then make sure you're making more than minimum wage when you quote one.
Do not do any website without a contract. Consult with a good attorney and set up your company and design a standard contract that you will have everyone sign before you start work. Always require a deposit for your work. Always insist on payment in full before you launch a website. I like my work, but I like my work for free not at all. My company is an LLC and that keeps anyone from going after anything I own, like my house, my car and so on. I have to pay an annual Business Entity Tax in my state, but it's an insurance policy that is more than worth it.
Now, I am certain my suggestions have all ready bankrupted you in purchases and fees. But I have fewer headaches because I set things up before I really knew what I was doing.
Now that I know a little more, I am very pleased to show it off a little.
-Mark

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