body shops will reach out to you - thats usually suboptimal for alot of reasons, but its work
sadly, alot of my contracts come from interviews for full time positions where the customer is hiring for some special skill, but its clear there isn't a long term role for me there. that can lead to work
old contacts are the best way, but you have to stay on people's radar.
sofar I've found gig sites to be pretty useless. the site wants to constrain communication so that you cant have the normal design discussion up front - they just say 'microcontroller work <$250', bid yes or no
my impression is that the mvp webapp space is still pretty easy to make money in. not really in systems - decent employers know that its hard to make a contract work well and would rather have you as a resource ongoing. and everyone is just doing staple jobs these days, so 'kernel' and 'test' and 'embedded', and all the old specialties dont get you anywhere.
i would try to leverage someone you've worked with before who is now in a position to influence a contract decision. someone with whom you have a level of mutual respect. once you have something ongoing, always spend time trying to open up new opportunities.
the thing that i find hard is that as a hired gun, you can present your opinion for consideration - once. its not your role to pursue and agenda, you're there to provide hourly services at the discretion of the customer and you need to demonstrate concrete value.
to circle around, its this carefully negotiated per-task relationship that both removes the pain of trying to work around useless colleagues and eliminates any reward you might feel for shaping a product. this is not your party, you're just serving canapes.
Nailed it. This is the key difference, and matters a lot psychologically: you're not just acting as a waiter during the show, once the party is over you can't stick around you have to let go and move on to serve at the next party.
Comparatively, letting go on an ongoing product in a burnout inducing situation feels like you've given up while sticking to your guns feels like fighting windmills, either of which is just soul destroying in its own perverted way.