In my experience, most boutique development shops and agencies would love to put about 80% of their work through employees, and 20% through trusted contractors. Typically you need to be a product engineer--web, ios, etc. Expect to get paid about half of what you would for contracting work you source yourself. To get this work, go to conferences and be friendly with people in this group.

If you can't meet these people, build some open source thing they want (when I did this five years ago it was imagemagick integration for RoR). They'll contact you and pay you to customize it.

I have friends who've used https://grouptalent.com/main/talent/. They had a pretty good experience.

Good luck!

> Expect to get paid about half of what you would for contracting work you source yourself.

Being in a position that hires said contractors, I have to say this is false. Rates are competitive; we're not the one's setting them, the market is. Recruiter's commission may play a factor where it's involved, but it certainly doesn't halve the rate.

I'd also say "good luck" to acquiring contracts in your area of expertise directly from the companies that are buying them. They're looking for complete packages and the effort involved in acquiring and maintaing those relationships is quite often beyond the abilities of a single person.

I think, like most things, most of this stuff is case-sensitive. If the situation resonates with you, then the experience of what happened is valuable.

It sounds like you already have your mind made up and you've committed yourself to making the leap. Lots of people aren't there yet.

As for freelancing - your best bet is hitting the pavement and meeting people. People tend to kick jobs to friends or people they personally have connected with.

First step might be to, instead of waiting for work to bang on the door, open the door and go out and get it :)

Do you have a LinkedIn? I'm constantly contacted with offers for positions (full and part time) in areas of my expertise.

No, sigh. I have been avoiding linkdn forever as not being "cool", and should probably change that, eh?

If you're interested in that type of connection, I'd say it's unavoidable. Im not even very active, nor do I have a complete profile and I still get pestered.