Here's a good one - my first year taking clients and programming, it was back in 2000. I worked for a lady designer for an entire year practically full time. I got so sucked in and so screwed over, that by the time I finally quit I had made $1800 and she had bought me a new budget-grade computer. That's it. Did I ever learn some valuable lessons. Sheesh I was so brainwashed by her. Basically the promise of big money didn't come, and she never felt the job was done - she just kept adding more programming tasks, more features she thought the site needed, dangling the idea of big money in front of my nose. It was a sub-contract that was a large dating site, full of features, and I was built the entire thing myself, learning as I went. I even coded an instant messenger system for it that was rather revolutionary at that time. Unfortunately her client we were building it for hadn't budgeted a penny for marketing and shortly after I walked the project folded.
Lessons Learned:
1. Clients suck.
2. Someone will always try to take advantage of you.
3. Have a contract that spells out exactly what you will earn and what needs to be accomplished to have a finished product.
4. Just because you are a newbie doesn't mean you should work for nothing.
5. At the same time, you have to wonder why someone is hiring you as a newbie with practically no experience.
6. Hold out for cash, don't get paid in computers.
7. Living in your mother's basement, earning pennies, working day and night, isn't good for the waistline, nor the self-esteem.