Hehe, yeh, I'm not intending to sound argumentative - just throwing out my contrary viewpoint to that of you and Patrick.

You've fairly hit the nail on the head, BTW, in noting the problems of transitioning. I'd love to have larger scale projects (if I could actually keep interested in them ;)) with "better" customers (for whatever value of better). One problem for an individual, though, is actually gaining work - I hated doing that. The thought of having to constantly pitch for work (and to a certain extent managing it) puts me off.

But on the other hand - these smaller customers are currently getting shitty snake oil work, so when they hear about developers doing solid work in a friendly way they will come and bite your hand off.

To some extent I view that a "good customer" as much as anything :)