IT Professionals

The economic rewards that an IT professional will enjoy is governed by a few basic economic principles. The most important of them all is the effects of supply and demand.

Any commodity such as your wage is goverened by demand.  Thus you would like to be in high demand.
So how do you get yourself in a position where you will be in more demand? - find where there are high barriers to entry.
e.g. The tougher it is to get a certification, the higher the barrier is and thus the higher the rewards (wage).
A great way to earn a higher wage is to earn a certification that is in high demand such as the Cisco CCIE.
(This is all well and good if you are after a higher wage, but what if you want more time? a better lifestyle, work less and earn more, stop trading hours for $$$, etc)

However there are always upper limits to earning a wage, you can only work so many hours in a day to earn $$$.

No matter how hard you work, there is still a limit to your earning power.

However, if you look at a software vendor, they can release a product to market and sell thousands of copies, (and each copy has very little to no extra effort to sell once the system is setup).  Thus the limit to earning is only limited by the demand or how many people require that product.  The initial work is all at the beginning - creating the product, but one that system is setup - it can be duplicated to be a cash machine.

Applying this to the IT Professional, get yourself in a position where you are raising the upper limits to your income:

1. If you are working for a wage, work on contract instead.
2. If you are selling your labor, try to leverage this by getting multiple sources of revenue for the same labor. For example, if you have a contract to install Linux on 100 different machines, do it by getting paid per machine. Then set up one machine (your hours of labor) and then use a utility like Norton's Ghost to replicate this to all the other machines. The more machines you do this to the bigger your rewards.
3. If you are selling your knowledge, sell to many for a small amount each as compared to selling to one for a lot. For example, if you are an Exchange expert, write a book where you could earn $5 per copy as compared to doing one large install contract that pays a flat fee.

What are you selling to earn your income? - if you sell your labor, you will never get as far as someone selling a "thing" a.k.a. renting your capital.

Being in IT, you have opportunities to see how new technologies can impact and solve problems for clients.  There may be a more efficient way to do something, a new product that is more efficient, a better way to achieve a goal, etc.  Look for these opportunities!  If you can provide a way of doing something even 10% better then currently implemented, then you are solving a problem that can save $$$.  The initial returns may be low, but the long term potential is unlimited.

Modified from: http://www.cramsession.com