For me, looking back, the best funnel was publishing articles and doing work in the open in a mid-sized niche. People noticed me and offered contracts.

I'm not entirely certain this will work so well, since it seems everybody is an expert at personal branding with GitHub contributions and all that nowadays.

A "hyper connector" I knew also provided some leads but smaller in scope and pay.

HN job announcements were pretty bad as an experience. With the one exception.

I'm in corporate now, but I'm also wondering how to find the next leads. Curious what your experience is?