[MrFoof]

Are you simply freelancing (one-man body shop) or consulting? The former is a short-term employee, the other involves "paying for a solution to a problem". Both are done for cost savings, but with a bit more up-front work to get in the door, the second tends to get you paid better.

I've actually taken this route as of a few months ago, and the best advice is to share your new plans with people you've worked with in the past who have appreciated your work. Former managers, CIO/CTOs, even contingency recruiters who have placed you in the past (worst case, you work something out on a corp-to-corp basis and they'll have plenty of work and leads for you).

I mostly do data warehouse ETL recovery/refactoring, database performance tuning, and some data architect work. The way I sell it is to distill my previous work down to some easily digestible details: "Automated recovery of existing processes, eliminating manual hand-held recovery. Improved performance of evening batch processes by 1500%. Reduced replication time to DR site by 70%". Then, when asked about details, feel free to explain it in excruciating detail over lunch. If they have a specific need, odds are you can get them the results their looking for -- explain your approach, common issues, and get in the door. Even for something like, "I need X built", you have to look past "I can do it" and try to figure out what the customer is looking to get out of it (increased sales, conversion, etc.) and explain not only how can deliver on those metrics, but ideally back it up with previous history.

I've had lunches with former bosses, and talked to former co-workers. I'm not the guy who networks at all (< 20 LinkedIn connections, ~20 friends on Facebook), but I was almost immediately inundated. I have more work than I can take on at the moment, which means I'm simply raising my rate by 60% for the next client -- and they think that new rate is just ducky.

Patio also covered this topic rather well: http://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/09/17/ramit-sethi-and-patrick-...

[mechanical_fish]

I'm not the guy who networks at all

Oh dear, Facebook and LinkedIn have done the same thing to the word network that FB did to the word friend.

You definitely network. Whereas on LinkedIn we merely "network".

[MrFoof]

No, I really don't network.

The lunches et al weren't initiated by myself. Someone has a problem, my phone rings, they suggest lunch, and I figure it's a good excuse to get some fish and chips. I don't think I've gone out of my way to reach out to someone for career purposes in nearly a decade.

[ARRR]

MrFoof, while reading your answer i felt am reading my current situation. I am a database Architect and a Data warehouse Developer, Develop ETLs, Cubes and what goes around it and mainly use Microsoft Technology for that, am now totally burned out from my current job, i feel so tired from the routine, i want to take the step and move into my own thing were i can consult and grow on my own.

i find it much easier for Programmers, Wepapp developers, iphone of android to find jobs, but for us Database/datawarehouse pros i really don't know where to start from with clients.

if i may ask, how did you start and approached Clients, Data is very sensitive, clients don't usually allow outsiders to look into it, how did you overcome those challanges