Where is a good place to learn the ins and outs of contracts? Is there a comprehensive website or book that you can recommend?The freelance kit from www.sitepoint.com is where I learned a lot about techniques for freelancing. That's where I picked up the technique for deposits and milestones. In fact, one of the best pieces of advice I got from there was never to be the lowest bidder. There was a project we were bidding on, and the client ended up going with us even though we were the highest bid ($8000). He showed us the other bids, and they came in at ($1600, $2800, and $4500). He liked our proposal for a few reasons: One, the other 3 bids were just Word documents or PDFs attached to email. Ours was printed in color, bound, and sent FedEx overnight. Another, we had detailed writeups of 3 previous projects with testimonials and phone numbers of the clients (used with permission). Lastly, we had suggestions for additional features to add, with a cost/benefits analysis on each, along with suggestions of features that could be cut to reduce the timeline or cost. All of these were suggestions from sitepoint's ebook.