I'm glad I'm not the only one. basd, funny you mention IT. My own story of how I tripled my income (about 8 years ago) was in IT. I would love to hear ideas or stories outside of IT, which I guess that can be the problem. High earning positions are often in IT or Finance or require a lot of "official" schooling, which we generally want to avoid if we're already out there working, possibly just getting rid of the first round of student debt.
What I will say is 9 years ago I was at one of the big three consulting firms and out of random luck I was asked to learn a new technology I'd never heard of. At that time I also realized that my company was making like 5-10x what I made for each billable hour. This is common. In any client-facing, billable position, there is a markup for your time. Usually a pretty generous one. But it's not all margin, by any means. Billable hours are paying for all the non-billable work such as sales, administration, etc.
Back then, I was upset by all this, researched this new technology, realized there were lots of 3-15 month gigs for true experts and, because the technology was so new, the labor market wasn't yet flooded. These gigs were being handled by tiny companies that could maneuver the market faster than the less nimble big three. Tiny companies with little overhead can take a much smaller cut of the billable time, thus passing on more to the actual worker (a tactic they needed to take to get experts to jump ship). Needless to say, I started applying everywhere over and over and continued to sharpen my skills for about 3-4 months until finally I landed a 6 month gig paying close to 4X my then current rate. The risks were simple: walking away from a salaried position with healthcare and 401k to a short-term hourly position. To me, it was worth it. BTW, the 6 month gig lasted 15 months. This is also common.
The reason I tell this story is that, although I had a degree somewhat in this field and had some experience, I largely was able to make this switch by learning a new niche technology on my own and, as far as the people wiling to pay were concerned, they didn't care about my background, just whether I could do the job.
I also tell it because it was revelation to understand what an hour of my time could be worth versus what I was getting paid.
I have a friend that makes likely in the $60-90k range. It's a big range but not when compared to his billable rate which is pushing $300/hr. In comparison: $300/hr to customer = $30-45/hr to him.
Anyway, that's my little tidbit. I would love to hear other stories. What are the next little niches? Any outside of IT or Finance? Any other takes on maneuvering the labor market to get more of the cut?