I just printed out these bullet points and stuck them over my phone!

We have fixed rates for different services which are absolutely non-negotiable.
However, we do have two forms of discount. One is a prepaid block of time, which can get up to 25% off depending on the number of hours, and the other is the same discount schedule applied on a per-week basis, which is useful for longer-running projects. Regarding referrals, if clients like doing business with you the referrals will happen, don't worry about that! And if you keep an eye out for your clients that helps too. E.g. we just signed up a new customer that has a power management product for large data centers. We also have a vendor relationship with a company that has earthquake mitigation products which are used in data centers all over the world. These two products have no relationship with each other at all technically speaking but their target markets are identical. It doesn't cost us anything to introduce them and the doors they can open for each other will mean millions in additional revenue - you can bet our name will get passed around one way or another...

This is a good list. I've been consulting for over fifteen years and got to learn some of these the hard way. :)

There are a lot of good suggestions here. (Listen to Kevin, he knows whereof he speaks :). But I thought I'd throw a little additional info out. First is another free program for the Mac that I use personally. It's called SilverKeeper, made by the well known Mac storage company LaCie. It's intended for use with their storage products of course but it works with anything and is freely downloadable from their site: http://www.silverkeeper.com/ Regarding backups in general, whatever media you use, whatever system you use, whatever software you use, there are several things that need to be considered:

• how much data can you afford to lose? This will determine how often the backup needs to be performed.
• how much data do you need to backup and how much of it changes on a regular basis? This will determine what mode of backup you use and how often you do a full backup vs incremental.
• how far back in time do you need to be able to go? This will also play a role in determining the mode of backup (and is one reason most companies do still use tape). A couple of things to take into account here include how long it might be before you discover a data loss (e.g. quarterly reports) and what the nature of that loss might be (e.g. having a virus might mean that you need to go back several months to find an uninfected set of data).
• what are your options for storage of media? I.e. if the place burns down or everything is stolen, where are the backups located and how is it protected? E.g. making daily backups but only putting monthly snapshots in a bank safety deposit box could actually expose you to a worst case loss of up to an entire month. (It's a good idea to keep the most recent backup in some way offsite but easily accessible, such as by sending it home with a trusted employee or even keeping it on your person).

And a couple of tips: Regarding fire-proof safes, if you use one for onsite storage of media keep in mind that A - no safe is truly fireproof, and B - if it's not rated for media you'll have a pool of melted plastic in the bottom! And be sure to test your backup/restore strategy regularly! Backups are useless if the data cannot be restored from them and there are a great many possible causes for bad backups. The time you really need it is not the time to discover it wasn't working properly...