I too make a very good living with PB. My full-time job is writing software in PB!

I also do software on the side in PB for industry (in fact one client I convinced to let me rewrite a program I had written previously in another BASIC. I sold them on the fact that we could get rid of the runtime (1m+) and the SLL and DLL files. I could also easily add some features to it that would be very difficult in the other BASICs. They bought it and I rewrote the thing from scratch in PB in half the time! The exe was about 30k--I think).
I've been programming in BASIC since my TRS-80. I've written lots of useful code for industry and for fun. I wrote a program that controlled a Weber grill for Weber-Stephens. It opened and closed gas values, read weight from a strain-gage---everthing!
I'm no guru, just resourceful. The great thing about PB is that I can create stand-alone modules in days. Modular programming is very useful. Big general workhorses have their place, but a suite of small modules can do even more. Modules have the advantage of not needing setup and they are simple (almost intuitive) to learn for the user. PB is great for creating modules (my modules even query large dbases like FileMaker and they work seemlessly with CAD programs).
I started with Liberty BASIC as my first of the VB clones. It was nice and a lot like the old BASIC I knew, but that's all it wants to be (BASIC). Anything really exciting requires lots of API calls (even simple stuff like accessing the clipboard, statusbars and ListIconGadgets).
I tried IBasic next but the syntax was too quirky. The listicon demo is 230 lines long! They don't have simple built-in requestors and creating just a InputRequestor took me about a day (with help) and saving pointers--yuck! The learning curve was just too great! The learning curve for PB was very short (that's money right there).
So viva la PB and Fred (how's your health?). No more parties....get back to work!
Just my 2 cents.
Thanks.