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I'm a full time freelancer, and I've never shown anyone a portfolio. My jobs are all earned by my reputation, which I get by my networking efforts. Even back when I had a fulltime job, I've been attending conferences and meetups, talking to people, and generally impressing them with what I know. That's how I got the ball rolling in the first place -- I've been doing this for 4 years now.

If you are a developer, and you seem relatively smart, there are hundreds of people waiting in line to hire you. Everyone needs a web developer. Everyone.

I'm spending about $500/day and making $300-$1000/day profit running affiliate offers. I'm using Facebook ads to bootstrap my development. I vote "Yes", it works, unless you are bad at it.

Hi there, here's some unsolicited advice from someone who's not much unlike you -- I quit employment about a year and a half ago when I had a fair chunk of cash, and now I'm launching startups for myself.

I've built about 5 projects to "almost completed" status in the last year. And each project has been "re-built" at least twice. It sounds like I'm in a very sad state, no better off than you, but my friend, I have fantastic news! I'm running out of money! There's tons of pressure now! And because of the accumulated pressure I've been feeling in the last 2-3 months, I finally put up one of the projects I'm working on, and after a stint of work today, it should be ready to accept paying customers (even if it's not fully glossy and conversion-tuned yet).

My advice to you? Find ways to put yourself under pressure. If it's not financial strain (like I have no choice in), then make it peer pressure and social pressure; Put up a website for what you're working on, and start talking about it. Post it on your Facebook, to HN, and anywhere else you feel like talking about it. Pray to a god-you-may-not-believe-in that people give you negative feedback, because that's the best motivator. "You can't do it, you're gonna go broke, you're doomed to fail!" is what the little man in my mental coal-room is shouting as he whips the hamster that powers my typing fingers.

Hey! Thanks so much for giving back! I've mostly just lurked in the HN community for the past 5 years, but this week, I launched my alpha-beta-pre-launch phase of my startup, http://www.srvr.dj -- I've already filled out your WuFoo form, would you mind giving me a few sentences of candid commentary?

I see two problems with this strategy: a) New developers still see "60 days" and say "Fuck you!", you should emphasize the shortest available payment schedules on your site (make the "anti-fraud" period seem more like a short hurdle to get over) b) 30 days is still too long for verified publishers; while it's a reasonable "new account" rate (for after your beta period), if I'm verified and doing volume on your service, I expect Net-7 or daily.

But what do I know, I'm just a developer who's looking for a recurring billing platform for my indy service.

I'm a contractor who just quit my fulltime client (the 9-5 "job") to bootstrap my startup as well; I live in North County San Diego. I only have ~3 months in the bank, but with two part-time clients, I pay all my monthly bills, with the rest of my time going into my startup and I live a block from the beach in the middle of a coastal downtown area.

Life is good :) Take the plunge. PM me if you wind up moving down here, would love to get coffee.

It's not a "problem", it's a gift.

Engineering the project is the hard part, but for a lucky some of us, it's the fun part. "Polishing" your project, on the other hand, blows. Who wants to spend the day building flow for user account cancellation or tweaking the registration page, when you could be optimizing code?

The win-win situation here is clear: Do the engineering that you love & pays the bills, hire cheap talent to do the cheap, boring parts. Because, at least speaking for myself, if I'm being honest a $12 hour designer would do these "menial" jobs BETTER than me.