Recruiters generally aren't interested in you at any advertised rate, or even for any particular skill. They just see Java (substitute as necessary) and contracter in the general vicinity of each other and decide to call you up and smooch you, even if the job is not a good fit and pays half what you charge. Problem is, you often have to keep in touch with recruiters to keep the flow of work, so you can't just cut them off entirely.

Burner phones and email addresses for recruiters is certainly a thing, though.

My current rate is nearly double the rate of my first contract which was equivalent to double my last permanent salary. This is after a few years of contracting, starting off in a low-cost city (Belfast, N. Ireland) branching out to Dublin and now London.

Probably because they prefer to spend their time working in a stable contract rather than out of work marketing themselves.

My current contract is for a year and I invoice monthly. If I doubled my rate I'd be out of work.

> May I ask why you have not doubled your rates?

Because they're not going to go in and cause a huge increase in revenues like Patrick does.