[forcetenhen]

Ok - long delayed response since I lost my damned login :)

Thanks very much for all the replies, MUCH appreciated - and it seems to have given me the big kick I needed.

Since I posted, I managed to wangle a £10k raise. Basically gave a polite ultimatum with a well sourced list of equivalent jobs ~£30k. It's a good start!

I also took on board some of the Rentacoder type tips and have started to build up a rep on there. Did a few all-day $20 jobs, which was horrible, but I've just now finished a couple of jobs at $150 and $250 with around $500-800 due to complete soon. On top of that, I dug out a couple of old contacts and emailed on a whim. Could have £2k monthly coming in from their project overflow.

I'm also gonna look into doing some FOSS stuff if I can somewhere I'll make a good fit.

tl;dr: thanks an effing million. I was wallowing in self-pity and knew it. I really needed something like this. Now I'm slowly getting rich :)