There's a ton written about running a startup, but there is amazingly little written about doing a professional services design / development firm. Anybody know of good sources for running a good services firm?
If you agree to do a project for $3000, make sure you can really get it done for that prices. You also need to figure out how to deal with change-requests. If you allow too many free change requests, you will lose money.
When setting the prices, you need to think like a businessperson. A lot of designers and programmers don't understand how to price their work very well.
Yes, and to repeat another point you made earlier, the price you need to charge includes the associated overhead. I have seen many people start in consulting only to fail because they didn't take their overhead costs into account, or at least enough into account, when billing. The only real difference between failing to bill for overhead costs at all and not billing enough is how long it takes you to fail.