Argh. I’ve had this problem at least twice already, but since it’s always so long interval between installing Skype on a new PC and Xampp I always forget this:
Skype uses ports 80 and 443 by default.
That’s why Xampp doesn’t work, Apache won’t start but there is no error message either. Hopefully I will remember this time…
I just saw a post in LinkedIn about bad prices when you do freelancing on websites. Granted, you won’t get rich by doing that but 500 bucks for a simple CMS site is not so bad, I’m sure you get it done in a day if the site is something along these lines:
http://www.asiafinland.com/
http://www.english-vietnamese-translation.com/
http://www.vanphongphamth.com/
http://www.duhocphanlan.info/
http://www.friends4charity.net/
You can also make extra money by providing the hosting in the same package. Granted, cheap-ass hosting doesn’t make you much profit but you can easily host 20 low-traffic websites with 20 bucks/mo VPS, and charge customer 3 bucks per month and still appear very cheap.
The problem I see with web sites is that sales effort is too big. Those are simply too small projects to make almost any effort to get a deal. So what I do is that I pitch only for bigger and longer projects (currently I’m developing a micro-loan payment system), and do some small websites when some friend of a friend happens to want one. It’s fun to draw those logos anyway every now and then. 
Also, you can take a risk with customer, get % of the company and offer cheaper price and longer term commitment against bigger profits in future. Of course that only works with start-ups, bigger projects and people who you know beforehand.
As iPhone Application Store gets more and more crowded, it gets more and more important to find out what is the “edge” of your product. Clever marketing? Controversial theme? (but not *too* controversial for all-censoring Apple…) Or what?
Great examples: iSnort cocaine snorting “game” (without explicit reference to the drug!), iFart (of course) and this Russian roulette marketing video. There are stuff for every possible category so you really need to stand out of the crowd.