Become certified - charge more

Some will disagree strongly with this section.

It is true that many view certifications as worthless. They prove, so the criticism goes, that the person has done nothing more than download the brain dumps and sat the exam.
That may be true... but there is very little else out there that can quickly indicate to a client that you are competent.

In other words, what better mechanism exists for quickly tellling clients that you are skilled in a particular field?

Suggested Certifications

Also, be aware of the different certifications.

There are Microsoft Certification for developers, support staff, technical engineers.
There is Certified Partner status for companies.
There are project management certifications such as PRINCE2 and Scrum (training courses here) and other such as the Project Management Institute
There are support department certifications such as ITIL (details on Australian courses here)

Having these all covered can do you no harm.
And it allows you to charge more.

Selling Certification

Here's how you can sell certification for ongoing development work:
'We have a number of programmers who can handle this work. I'd like to organise for one of our Certified Developers to take over this project phase. She costs $XX. Alternatively we can get one of our junior guys to handle it. He's not certified however he is a little cheaper at $X...'

At the very least it allows you to justify your prices in the event of a customer querying your price.