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Comment by paf31 | Hacker News Reader

> With minor advertising and effort, I have more inbound work requests than I can personally take on.

I'm very much interested in moving more towards contract-based employment, so I would love to hear more about the mechanics of getting off the ground, and any recommendations for advertising my services etc.

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I've been a contractor since 2010. I've never had any problem finding work. I have received 1 job through my website, everything else has been through contacts. Before contracting I had 10 years as an employee of various companies. I think it is much harder to do contracting with less than about 5 years experience, you just won't have the contacts.

There is no trick to what I do, whenever I run into an old colleague, I tell them I'm contracting now. They will either have or know somebody looking for my skills. I've even gone back to companies I worked as an employee and helped them during crunch time.

I think when you are employed full time, people are reluctant to make you offers, but as soon as you are a available the offers seem to appear.

AngelList is a great resource. Fill out your profile, connect with people you know, and list yourself as a contractor. Then go through jobs looking for contractors and hit "Yes." This is how I've found 90% of my contract work over the past 3 years (in the Bay Area).

I just watched a webinar about freelancing. Although it's not specifically about getting off the ground, it is touched on a bit.

http://doubleyourfreelancingrate.com/w/clientsfromhell.html

You should get a link to the recorded webinar when you sign up.

Try the HN freelancer posts every month, just respond to requests that fit your skill set, compete on price and over-deliver.

I might write a new post about getting started, but essentially I just strung up a portfolio website on strikingly.com and a google apps account. FigBug is right, most of your work will end up coming through people you know, you can augment that by hitting up meetup groups and hackerspaces.

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