[revorad]

Write online, ask your friends to refer clients, ask people for work at meetups/conferences, cold call and email companies, look up the dozen remote job boards that crop up every other week, subscribe to every industry mailing list you can.

There are about a 1000 ways to do it. But you have to actually do it.

[jnbiche]

Here's a business plan: someone build a site for us developers who despise marketing and/or who suck at it.

(I mean, if I loved marketing, I would have become a marketer).

Pair us with someone who loves marketing. S/he finds high-paying consulting jobs, I build awesome sites and/or mobile apps, and we split all the income 50%/50%, minus fees for the company.

Have some kind of rating system, where both your peers and customers rate your work. The higher that you are rated, the better marketer you can get paired with. I imagine the top marketing experts could find clients willing to pay $1000/hr rates for the top developers.

[zhte415]

I think this could work.

Mediocre developers are often charged out at $1000/hr rates by big name tech companies to their big name clients, who themselves sub-contracted to mid name developers under quite careful contract terms (client liability). Sub-contractors sometimes sub-contract themselves.

I'm thinking from an enterprise type technology stack: A smaller startup offering PaaS or SaaS to enterprise clients, perhaps replacing an in-house system could benefit from the indirectly acquired knowledge and expertise pool of enterprise developers, where the barriers to entry are sometimes slow and expensive.

[purringmeow]

Cold call and email what companies? About what work? I doubt most of the mid-sized and big companies will hire a contractor with no recommendations from someone close to the execs.

I am not nitpicking, just sharing that what you've suggested works only for very experienced people with a big network. I am still in University.

[revorad]

Unless you've actually tried and failed at cold calling, that sounds like a typical excuse (which I used to use as well). If you're scared, you'll have to get over it by just trying it a few times.

And contrary to your belief, being in university is a great advantage. You can say you're a student doing some research/looking for help, and people are generally much more willing to help.