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Try to market yourself to design/ad agencies. They always need contractors and have a huge network of clients that need professional work and have the budget for it. I'm currently on salary (working remotely, though), but almost all the work I've ever had came through my connections from a 2 year stint I did at a design firm. If you're in a large city it should be easy to find some industry events to check out (AIGA events are a good place to start). I always had a lot of luck selling my developer skills to designers, and selling my design skills to developers.

I think this is the easiest path OP can take. good advice

I would say get involved in your local community... go to meet-ups, tech talks, Startup Weekends, etc, and become a known entity.

The real benefit to this is you get to meet people who are already established, as usually those are the people who tend to do these things and sometimes they work in teams. I did a pro-bono project with a local known dev, he liked the work and invited me to come along on a long-term paid gig which was sufficient enough for me to quit my day job.

I think this is a great point. I've seen time and time again the old adage "it's not what you know, it's who you know" ringing true. It took me a long time to stop moaning about it, and start doing something about it instead.

I was coming here to say this; there are meet-ups, business breakfasts (VERY early but very nice to find clients), etc. A friend of mine from an underdeveloped part of the EU thought he could make no money there; he went to a few business breakfasts there after finding out they actually were held there. Few months later he has ONLY work from his region and more than enough to say he cannot take new work till beginning of 2013. It really works...

Wow, how do you find out about these things? I'm in western Europe and have been planning to go freelance but getting started seems pretty intimidating so far.

Where are you from? I probably can find them in your neighborhood.

Edit: check my profile here; you can mail me if you want.

I do this a lot. A couple things I've realized: - Quite a few of the people you meet aren't going to lead to much. A few of them will lead to something but not until further down the road. Basically, not everyone is looking for freelance developers.

- You have to know a bit about sales. If I'm talking to someone non-technical looking for an online store, I'm an expert in e-commerce, but if I was talking to someone in the industry, I'm less likely to throw out the term expert and more likely to try and talk about specifics.

- This is culture dependent but in the States, I've found being too modest is a negative and people seem to interpret it as either disinterest, lack of confidence, or lack of skills.

- I once overheard a discussion that went something like this, "I'm looking for a developer." "If you can get <that person> that would be great." I'm not there yet but I want to be <that person>.

"in the States, I've found being too modest is a negative"

A Uruguayan delegation went to Silicon Valley recently, and one colleague mentioned one takeaway was that most americans are very "aggressive" selling themselves and outspoken, it came out as a bit of bullshitting to him, as we come from a more modest culture.

I think you should look at it from the perspective of the client. Clients want to make sure that they can feel secure in your ability to accomplish the task properly, and they want to feel like they will not be ripped off.

As someone who has hired contractors before, I can tell you what makes me feel comfortable. One is to hear specifics about how the contractor has experience with the specific technologies I use. If I am using Python/Django and the contractor mentions experience with that, then I know he or she read my specification and has the particular types of qualification that I need. I also like it when contractors have some open source work they can point to, since that gives me an example of their work and also makes me feel that they are active and interested in their field.

Not everyone on freelancing sites is choosing the cheapest bid. It might be worth it to you to give it a try even if you take a few less than ideal projects to begin with, just to build up a portfolio and a job history.

Also (and I know this view isn't super popular on HN), I like working with a new contractor on a fixed-price payment plan. If they are willing to do that, to me it indicates that they have confidence in their ability to complete the task promptly, and I don't risk that a bad contractor will drag the project out and cost me lots of money. Perhaps that would help you reassure clients that you are capable before they have had the chance to work with you, at least until you have a strong portfolio to demonstrate your skills. Good luck!

Good point about the fix contract plan, I hadn't thought about it from a hiring perspective before.

Almost all the jobs I've had so far have been fixed contract first. Once they're confident with my abilities I move to a daily rate. I'm not interested in working on a per project basis forever, it's not good for either party!

Of course fixed bid is fantastic for the client, but it can be a really bad deal for the contractor. I work for a consulting company that does a lot of fixed bid work, and we've been absolutely destroyed by some projects where scope got out of hand. I'm not blaming our clients for this, but I what I'm trying to say is that working on a fixed bid basis has its own set of challenges including things like arguing whether feature X is covered by the original scope or not.

I don't normally post links to my articles, but check these posts out which cover this topic:

1) http://robbieabed.com/how-to-make-money-as-a-new-developer/ (i know you have experience, but understand concept.

2) http://robbieabed.com/thinking-about-quitting-your-job-10-un...

3) http://robbieabed.com/your-professional-network-sucks-and-it...

In Summary. You have the skillset. Build an internal network, and the offers will come. It just takes a long time. Let me know how I can help if you have more questions.

> "it feels like so much bullshit with all those 20$ offers getting the upper hands"

You can't just put in a bid that looks the same as theirs except for the dollar amount. You have to differentiate yourself:

- Communicate clearly. Before you've even put in a bid, ask questions and discuss the technical challenges you foresee. Be prompt; respond within hours rather than days. Make it clear that they're getting a whole different level of ability with you than with the bottom of the barrel.

- Be willing to offer a quick turnaround on a sub-project, as a proof of ability. It's a big risk to commit thousands of dollars to you sight-unseen, but if a client can commit $50 to have you fix a smaller problem, this can give them confidence to go with you for the full project.

- learn some rudimentary design (something like http://www.amazon.com/Non-Designers-Design-Book-Robin-Willia... ). "Full stack" isn't full enough; your clients don't want to put together a team, they want to pay their money and get a complete product. Coders who can make an ugly website are all too prevalent; separate yourself from them.

- if you're going through a freelance site that has certification tests or similar, take a day and go through them. It shows you're willing to put in the effort -- or, rather, not having done so shows the opposite.

A very simple formula worked for me: a full LinkedIn profile and a technical blog. I've found that many people land on my LinkedIn profile, then some continue to my website where they can get an idea for my skill level by looking at some blog entries. Also, the clients that come via that channel are usually high quality clients. In general, they are dev shops with too much work to handle in-house, so they're looking for an extra hand. Since they're technical people, their projects are clearly stated and expectations are realistic.

There's really no excuse here for not getting something on-line. Twitter bootstrap, Theme Forest, etc make it easy to create something that looks reasonably good.

Also do you have any projects on github/bitbucket? Have you contributed to any open source projects? These are all things employers look for and set you apart from other developers.

I've found people aren't too interested in my previous job roles, they're more interested in talking to me. Every time I've sat down and talked to a client, not only have they felt confident enough to hire me as a freelancer, I'm almost always asked if I'm looking for full time work.

I don't market myself as a web designer. I'm a web developer, I do programming not design, and I make that clear right from the start. The companies I work for have more than enough people who can do design. They don't have people with the skills and experience I do as a developer.

I've been doing iOS apps for the last year or so and lately I've had a bunch of people approach me for work mainly because they liked the apps I'd published on my own. I think if you want to get started freelancing the best thing to do is build up some kind of online portfolio to show people what you can do.

If you're not a designer yourself maybe you could partner with a designer in a similar position that's interested in collaborating on a few portfolio-building projects?

Thanks, sounds like a reasonable advice! Does portfolio have to be quite large to attract people with application ideas? Is it yours: http://www.plastaq.com ?

Well I'm too new at this to be able to give you a good answer. It probably depends on exactly which programming market you're trying to get into.

And yes, that's my site.

There are also many website design concepts floating around both as simple images or HTML templates. You could use these (with the permission of the author/artist) to sidestep the design section.

For example: http://browse.deviantart.com/designs/web/

Where are you moving to? Because that's where you need to do your networking. And possibly figure out your own work visa issues.

Your main goal doesn't seem to be more time, but a different place and more money. Start by networking with local recruiters to get your foot into that market. They often can get you contracting jobs. Then you can network with locals.

Finally, full stack software is a big job - in fact it's many jobs, and rarely do developers do all of them (and never well). I've been freelancing for almost 4 years, but never completely on my own. I always team with other locals with different skill sets to tackle more complex projects with better rates.

It sounds cliche but network. I don't do anything I'd consider actively networking, but I've had more freelance work than I can do come my way over the last year and I haven't tried to get any of it. (I don't actually like freelancing much, I prefer working on my own products but it pays well so I take some of it)

Anyway, just let people you meet know what you do. I've gotten jobs from friends, my wife's boss, people I've only met in forums online etc. just because I'm the guy they know that does X, in my case mobile apps.

It's worth not being put off by the 20 dollar offers, a lot of people don't take them seriously and only look at the more realistic offers and if they do go for one of the ridiculously low ones, they almost certainly aren't worth working with.

The word of mouth jobs in my experience generally pay better and tend to be more interesting but I've had good experiences with freelancer.co.uk in particular when I've wanted bits and pieces while waiting for bigger pieces to start etc.

Do you have any side projects? Or any project idea which can demonstrate your abilities? If yes, then work on it and share it on HN/Dribble/Github/Forrst.

I got my first freelancing gig via a side project.

Once you get your first client project, all you need to do is to build on top of it.