[brianshaler]

Word of mouth, referral.

Put another way, freelancing means your job is part your vocation and part sales and marketing. You generally need to be proficient at both in order to be successful.

For me, personally, while I was an employee I went to monthly tech meetups—ideally cross-functional, not just programming language user groups—and travel to conferences on my own dime.

Things have changed in the last 20 years, but the principles of what worked for me still apply. I met people from around the world at conferences like sxsw interactive and kept in touch on a nascent pre-celebrity twitter. When I decided to go freelance, I had over 100 acquaintances to reach out to, whether they might want to work with me or to keep me in mind if they eventually had someone to refer. Obviously, the communities and platforms would be different today.

It helps to specialize, so when someone encounters a need for $skill or $domain they think of you. For me, that was data visualization. I also built a portfolio with a lot of automotive work, which begat more work in that industry.