[blumkvist]

The sibbling's recommendations are obviously good, but sometimes rather impractical. I have an advice that has work out great for me and other people I know and is how most contracting business keep afloat and get early growth.

Specialize and partner up. If we use a webdev for example, he might specialize in marketing. Shopping cart platforms, Survey/Forms software, SEO/PPC agencies, basically everything that tangentially touches web development in that particular field. Instead of marketing, you might try HR and go for Companies that resell Sharepoint, Alfresco, Opentext, recruiting agencies, etc. The possibilities are endless.

Carve out a niche that has well-paying clients. Do some cool stuff on your website to showcase your skills. Start outreaching for companies in that niche. Keep in touch with them and mention from time to time that you're looking to build a clientbase. Referrals and/or subcontracts will fly your way. You will also get visitors on your site from SEO/social. In the meantime, you can straight-out cold email target customers with sales literature. It might sound silly, but it works if you're smart about it.

You will build a large enough network to fill all your hours in no time.

[mgkimsal]

You're not wrong, but I didn't want to write a whole book on the topic (well, I'm in the middle of one actually).

But what you described is another part of networking - finding other people in the field who can get you work, and becoming a partner to them - either for direct referral or subcontract work, or just pre done services.

Niching is certainly my recommendation - one of my points was to find a particular industry you want to serve, then focus on that - f2f meetings in that industry is just one aspect of it (but can also open a lot of doors quickly - one mention from a f2f contact 2 weeks ago turned us on to a whole network of related professionals that need a service we're working on).

Excellent points :)