[jcadam]

Egads! I'm so ready to do this. I'm in my late 30s and have been a salaried engineer my entire career. I'm sick of corporate culture and dealing with dysfunctional petty politics. My current environment is particularly depressing. You know the office from the first part of Joe vs the Volcano? It's kind of like that :|

I'll admit, there's an element of risk aversion holding me back. That and I simply can't afford to start at the bottom and work for peanuts in order to 'build a reputation' as a freelancer.

[zackmorris]

As another data point, I'm about the same age, live in Idaho and freelanced around 2012 charging about $30-40 per hour and taking anything I could get on Elance/oDesk (now Upwork). I flipped PowerPC iMacs with the blown capacitor issue, took a local service call once or twice a month, and worked on shareware. I eventually went broke, but I landed a $50/hr, 6 month contract in a local office at the end doing backend web work.

I managed to save about $20,000 and freelanced the same way the next year or so, but charging $50/hr. Money steadily dropped, but it was mostly due to taking fixed-bid contracts, not tracking my time well, estimating done dates and then failing to bill after the deadline. So try not to give time estimates (which are often by by a factor of 3-10 or more), and if you do, be sure to bill if you go over. They are paying for the time it takes you to solve a problem, not your ability to guess at unknowns that can't be known until you've done them.

After that, I got a great gig at a local agency. If I find myself being a contractor again, I would charge 1.5-2x my desired hourly pay. In internet tech now, that's probably $75-150k/yr, $35-75/hr, even in rural areas, so a $75/hr freelance rate is probably a good minimum.

In other words, there's not an easy way that I could see to survive long as a contractor by taking a pay cut from your current salary. It's better to think in terms of charging twice as much as you're paid now, but finding work half as often. Which is generally worth it because it gives you time to work on your skills, do side projects, etc. I would not take other advice to moonlight, because a programming job by itself generally tends towards burnout.

[ydt]

I've been doing freelance/contract work since 2004. My advice would be to start by doing hourly contract work through agencies/recruiting firms. It's not glamorous, but it initially saves you from having to worry about sales and collecting the money, perhaps the two most stressful parts of freelancing. You'll get a check every two weeks and develop contacts in different organizations. Find an accountant that specializes in professional services and set yourself up as an LLC and do the work with a corp-to-corp arrangement. Once you get comfortable and have some reliable clients you can cut out the middlemen.

[rbobby]

Do you know anyone that has left your company and is now working somewhere else? Talk to them about contracting opportunities.

And don't fall for nonsense about 'build a reputation' as a freelancer (mostly this is an attempt to reduce the rate you'll accept). You skills and experience speak for you, regardless of whether contract or full time.

What unique skills do freelancers have that you don't? Finding new gigs (not important to someone hiring); filing taxes (not important to someone hiring); having an accountant (not important to someone hiring); owning/operating a corporation of some form (not important to someone hiring).

[toomuchtodo]

Moonlight. Build customer base and savings cushion. Jump from corporate gig.