Seth Godin, again, hits the nail on the head in his weblog - describing the two ways in which companies can hire free-lancers.

I’m squarely a type one person by now.

One of my last clients called me / us “cowboys”. We completed the project on time, on budget, and on spec even though it was clearly a panic-mode project by the time we got involved, but I turned down a follow-up proposal. Because they were clearly in the type two camp. From a business standpoint, they were probably right, but I sure would have loved to tackle that challenge with a clean sheet of paper.

Soît.