Stop using outsourcing sites to source clients. Your new rate is $100 per hour, until I can convince you to switch to weekly rates in any case. Go out there and beat the bushes to find businesses which have problems which you can address in AWS/NodeJS/etc which are worth paying your new rate.

After your income spikes, start saving some of it so that you can tolerate lean periods between clients. This will let you stop working for less-desirable clients and try experiments like bumping your rate without having to worry about what this will do to a count-on-one-hand number of clients in the pipeline.

When you say "go out there and beat the bushes" what exactly do you mean? I have tried networking a little bit at one or too networking events but few people seemed interested in my help.

Networking events are generally not the best place to meet people with business problems -- they tend to attract a bit more of an aspirational audience. Business owners with budget congregate in predictable places: conferences for their industry, their own offices, locally organized meetups, the Chamber of Commerce, etc etc. If you absolutely can't find an appropriate event, throw one yourself. I'm totally serious. Throw a seminar on How to (Put Any Business Goal Here) With (Pick A Technology They Have Heard About Recently) For (Pick An Industry). Rent out a room for a few hours at the local civic center or whatever you have in your neck of the woods. Buy coffee/donuts for everyone. Teach folks for an hour. Give a five minute sales pitch at the end. Let folks mingle for a while so they can enjoy your coffee and donuts. Many people will come up and introduce themselves to you.

(This can be done on approximately a $100 budget in Ogaki, so that's probably the upper bound for you. If you can't afford that, write up how this advice actually worked out for you in a blog post and I'll reimburse you.)

Invite people via pre-existing networks like e.g. the Chamber of Commerce, which is generally happy to tell their members about free events which aren't (explicit) sales pitches.

When meeting people, ask about their business problems. Listen. Tell them that you understand those problems. If appropriate, say that you think you can produce a solution to those problems, since you are in the business of doing that as a technology consultant, and offer to discuss that problem in more detail after the event.

Also plan on doing this more than once, and analyze your performance to ensure you get better.

One thing that programmers forget is that, at some point, you weren't good at programming, but over time, you learned and now you are pretty good.

Your business/social skills may be at that same starting level, and this isn't something you read about on the internets and are immediately good at.

Start now, plan on doing this over time, and learn to get better at it. It takes effort, but it will be worth it.

Oh god, Tom.

That right there: "One thing that programmers forget is that, at some point, you weren't good at programming, but over time, you learned and now you are pretty good."

That's just an enormous revelation. I can't even tell you how good it was to talk to Dave Rodenbaugh and he basically said: "See, you are now good in giving talks. Do you remember the first time?" and I was like: "Yeah, I remember: I nearly cried afterwards"

And I needed someone to tell me this!

Patrick's (patio11's) advice is really the advice you should be following. However, I can easily imagine how daunting those steps must sound. (Rent a room? Stage an event? Get up and talk? Woah.) I hate to think of that paralyzing you from trying something different. So, an alternative (though not necessarily better) option I suggest is, at the networking events you attend, look for someone to learn from.

Look for someone that impresses you - both technically and professionally. Someone that, if you could succeed in patterning yourself after, you'd consider yourself fulfilled and successful. Grab their ear, pick their brains, ask them for advice. Show them your interest, enthusiasm, and aptitude - and earn their respect. Hopefully, they'll help you get to where you want to be.

If you don't do _anything_ else, fill out your HN profile with some contact information. Right now, you're making it difficult/impossible for potential clients/employers to contact (the Hacker News) you. Why?

Thank you for your advice. +1. I put my personal contact information in my profile for the entirety of the internet to see. I wonder who the heck is going to call me? Well, there it is.

No problem. And thanks for helping me discover http://hnnotify.com

You're welcome! I love HN Notify. It's funny but I saw it off of someone else's profile too! Email notification for HN is definitely awesome. I wish someone made one to give +1 upvote notification too.

ilaksh You should take this guy up on his offer, sounds like hes willing to mentor you.

I was going to write a lot of what patio11 already did - it's much the same advice I give to people in similar situations - I'll try to add a bit more.

It's 0 to do with your lack of degree. I have a degree in philosophy from 20 years ago - that plays 0 role in determining projects. Word of mouth and referrals are a primary key to projects coming in. How do you get those?

Networking events help some, but it's a slower process and more of a 'long term' effort to be keeping up. Finding events focused on a particular industry you want to serve (education, finance, writers, construction, food service, etc) will give you a bigger bang for your time investment. You may not have a portfolio specifically focused on 'industry x', but it doesn't matter - showing up at some of their events - and talking to people - will connect you with some players.

Asking people for referrals will generally help too, although doing this with clients from outsourcing sites won't - they've already demonstrated how they want to search for labor. If they like you, they won't want to loan their 'secret weapon' out to friends/colleagues - if they don't, they would't want to ruin their reputation by referring you to someone else. This is somewhat perverse, but it's logic I've heard from more than a few people who've found 'good' developers via sites like odesk. This only applies to people who are continually using your services on a regular basis though.

Following up on patio11 - run your own functions, and/or start your own meetup/networking group. Being the person who runs a regional meetup group will make you the gatekeeper for people who want to contact your group members, generally when they have job/project offers. This won't necessarily be a flood of business on day - again, this a bit more of a long-term strategy - but it can have some moderately quick pay off in some areas.

But... you will need those social skills - I've no idea if yours are good or bad, but just by doing some of these things and putting yourself out there, you'll be demonstrating at least a willingness to learn or improve those skills.

Find local/regional development shops - marketing agencies doing web work, for example - and ask if they have any overflow work. This isn't necessarily going to get you $100/hour work off the bat, but will connect you with more people in your area. That said, for newer projects, they may just price you in to their proposals, and as it's not the agency's money, they won't care too much what your price is - it's just one component of the project.

Also, re: AWS, Node, CoffeeScript - etc - the types of projects you're going to find on outsourcing sites aren't typically going to be relying on those. Business owners care far more about just getting something done than what tech it's using, but those that want specific tech by name probably aren't clamoring for coffeescript or typescript at this point - they'll be asking for drupal or wordpress or magenta by name.

I'm at [email protected] and would be interested in helping out more if I can - feel free to email me and we can discuss things in private more directly if you'd like.

I'd also throw out that I think you might need to consider travel - no idea if you do that or not, but I've had some projects I couldn't give to people because they weren't available to come on site a few times during the project (as in, drive 5-6 hours and stay overnight).

FWIW, I don't think you're alone - I think there's a number of people in your situation.

You're not the exception.

The big shot web devs in HN and in blogging forums are the exception -- and, through survivorship bias et al, they make it sound like it was just their "hard work and persistence" that got them there.

Not to mention that managing a business (freelancing) is a totally different skill set than web development. Of the developers out there who are decent at web development, many are hopeless at running a business.

The basics of running business can be learned. And as programming skills are currently really sought after compared to almost any other skills, the only business skills you need to learn is basic sales skills and asking for more money.

The only strategy you need to understand is "follow the money". Always try to understand how critical the project is to customer's core money making activities. If the project is an experimental iPhone app for promotional purposes, the budget is likely to be constrained.

For some odd reason, asking for more money seem to be really hard for many developers. We seem to have some internal mental critic saying that "You are not worth it". You can read stories from HN of people who have to get drunk to be able to send a bill to the customer. I remember how I kept postponing sending my first 100€/h bill to customer because I had these looming thoughts that it was somehow unfair. Despite that the customer was a huge organization making millions a month, and my work had helped them enormously.

You probably aren't charging enough. I have been through this so feel free to email me [email protected] if you'd like to discuss it.

Agree with dools - try charging more. I increased my revenues by 25% simply by asking. Once this contract is over, I'll increase my rates again. One important note - I have a proven record of someone who delivers. I suggest you invest in making sure your next customer understands it.

It doesn't take much - do a nice write up about yourself on LinkedIn and ask previous customers to write endorsements.

For many people, increasing rates also increases that ability to deliver.

A hand to mouth developer has to prioritize by which project will pay an invoice the fastest rather than the highest paying project (I need to get paid today, I can't afford to wait for big corp to pay me net 30.) That means plans may change on a day to day basis and low priority projects get delayed.

The hand to mouth developer may unexpectedly fall off the radar because he got his internet shut off and can't pay the bill.

The hand to mouth developer takes on too much work and ends up delaying everything because he doesn't have enough time to knock everything out. If he hits burnout from this, then he may fall off the radar indefinitely.

You MUST set your rates at least to a point where you can save money. You MUST have at least a 3 month cushion (the more the merrier.)

For those looking to hire freelance developers, a low rate should be a red flag. You don't want to risk your business on someone who is being affected by these issues.