Open source projects are crucial to modern software development, with over 80% of companies using open source code in their products. To become a valued and effective contributor, understanding best practices and etiquette is essential for making impactful contributions and fostering a collaborative environment. This guide outlines 10 essential practices that will help you achieve this goal. It emphasizes the importance of following contributing guidelines, understanding project scope and purpose, reproducing and investigating issues, creating new branches for changes, making focused and incremental changes, testing thoroughly, writing clear commit messages, engaging in constructive communication, respecting others' work, and being patient and responsive. By adopting these best practices, you can improve the quality of your contributions, build relationships within the community, and positively impact the software development landscape.