[rwhitman]

Freelance is all about your network of clients. It takes a long time to build and maintain a solid client base and you need to know how to sell yourself.

You're going to get mostly small "testing the water" type projects with new clients if you aren't very established yet. If you're any good, after a while these clients will continue to hire you for larger and larger gigs, and some will refer you to other, better, clients. Keep building the relationships and eventually you'll have a solid foundation of steady clients.

A tip I give to new freelance devs - try to work with boutique design / marketing / interactive agencies. They pay less than tech cos but will continue to give you interesting challenges and generally have lots of work and referrals. Great way to build a client portfolio early on. When I was starting out and didn't have clients I compiled a list of small agencies and sent each a cold intro email.

(Sometimes I hire devs for projects. Feel free to reach out, the website on my profile has a contact email.)