Almost always they start by having connections that hire them (old colleagues, former friends, etc.), building out those connections (conference talks, doing really good work, writing high quality blogs), and then if you're lucky, some word of mouth.
Good points - admittedly, I didn’t put enough effort into building connections through different pipelines back when I was contracting. Upwork and a few personal connections were my sole sources.
It just felt really difficult to do both the engineering work while trying to do customer development at the same time.
The fact that OP has been able to do this for so long, while supporting a family, piqued my interest.
Almost always they start by having connections that hire them (old colleagues, former friends, etc.), building out those connections (conference talks, doing really good work, writing high quality blogs), and then if you're lucky, some word of mouth.
Good points - admittedly, I didn’t put enough effort into building connections through different pipelines back when I was contracting. Upwork and a few personal connections were my sole sources.
It just felt really difficult to do both the engineering work while trying to do customer development at the same time.
The fact that OP has been able to do this for so long, while supporting a family, piqued my interest.
Can confirm.