How to become a programmer for hire?

Anyone know how to successfully start your own business as a programmer for hire. Consultant or contractor or whatever you want to call it.

From stackoverflow Brian G

• Best way to start is to get offers from people who (a) know your skillset, (b) have money, and (c) want to pay you.

  Brian G : The whole getting offers part is the tricky bit i think
  From Kevin Fairchild

• You could always start out working on sites like Rent a coder and see if you enjoy it or are good at it. After that... good luck :)

  Rob Allen : eLance(http://www.elance.com/) is also a good stop for this.

  Kev : Don't waste your time with rent a coder, it's jammed packed with people who want their applications built for next to nothing. Tried it after I was made redundant, full of idiots who know the value of nothing.

  bcwood : My experience with sites like rent a coder and eLance have been very poor. There are lots of developers on there from poor countries willing to do the work for next to nothing. It's next to impossible to get a decent gig on these sites.

  Brian G : Agreed on Rent-a-coder

  spoulson : Been there, done that. You will work you ass off for $200 and get no real appreciation.
  From FryHard

• This is really a duplicate.

  Good pointers on Selling yourself.

  You might also check here is you want to start your own company.

  Consultants are people with a skill that a company doesn't have and doesn't want to have permanently, but is willing to pay reasonably well to have temporarily.

  With that in mind, develop those kind of skills

  Andre Bossard : No it isn't. the question is different. No all 'programmers for hire' are or want to be consultants.

  Benoit : Start your own business...contractor? Sorry, but that's consulting. However you have a point. The answers were more geared towards working in a consultancy.
  From Benoit

• This is very easy. Put your CV on a job board and wait for the agents to get in touch.

  Most job boards have a profile setting setting that lets you specify if you are looking for Permanent or Contact work.

  From Martin Brown

• I work as a contractor. A small company resells me to big companies. My employee gives me a fixed loan. I got the Job, because one of my former work collegues started working there (and he's really a crack).

  So I think my way is to relay on my social network.

  From Andre Bossard

• I had a friend that decided to go into the business for himself doing custom VB and Access programming back in the late 90's. He went to the trouble to create some nice marketing materials showing the kinds of things he had done and was capable of doing. Then he started cold calling out of the phone book. Any place that he imagined might benefit from a little custom programming was open to him.

  After working for below minimum wage on a few projects, he learned how to give better estimates and after a year or so, he was doing pretty well. He is now a sought after Java programmer in the Health Care field.

  Moral of the story, if you want it badly enough and continuously work on upgrading your skills, you can make it.

  Best of luck :o)

  From wcm

• More info:

  http://stackoverflow.com/questions/25177/sites-for-getting-freelancer-jobs

  From Juan Manuel

• I work as an IT Consultant / Developer and have for over 10 years. Before that I did the standard Blue Chip programming gig from Programmer to Project Manager, then spent a period as an Oracle DBA. I moved to working for myself because (a) I love coding and developing stuff and (b) I loath office politics.

  I have never advertised for work, people have always come to me.

  In my experience you need two things - good coding skills and good people skills. The vast majority of my clients are either small to medium businesses (between 5 and 50 employees) or departments within larger organizations. I'm not generally coding large systems - my typical project would be around one man month of development, although I have a fair few 'maintenance' contracts where I maintain a system for x nominal days a quarter.

  In most cases I'm talking directly to the manager. Most such managers do not have IT development experience and are not comfortable with it - but know it's crucial to their business. What they are looking for is someone with whom they can discuss their requirements in plain business language and who they trust to offer them options and then deliver what they need. The ability to handle both the code and the human interface stuff is the key - many coders cannot. It's a great and rewarding role to perform and give you a lot of insight into different organizations.

  The issue then is how do you get the contacts which feed you work - I have about half a dozen 'core' clients at any one point and another half dozen less so - and there's a certain low level churn and the occasional once-off. The hardest part is undoubtedly getting started - nowadays new clients tend to appear by word of mouth (employees of my clients leaving and then either starting there own businesses or telling their new employees about me is a major route).

  In my case the initial contacts came by two routes - firstly writing some shareware, one user of which turned into a contact who needed an office system writing, which then expanded out from there (I think I have 4 or 5 different clients that can be traced back to that one) and secondly from talking to my local computer hardware supplier who was sufficiently impressed by the shareware that he passed my name on as a competent developer to a couple of local companies who he knew were looking for work done - I've many that can be traced back to that.

  Obviously your circumstances will differ, but I would strongly advise going down some version of this route rather than simply body-shopping as a code monkey on a rent a code website. You will always be less competitive than the eastern Europeans on such sites, instead consider how you might find face-to-face contacts. Writing shareware or open source as an Apprentice Piece to show you capabilities is a good move, and talk to your local computer shop or some other such people to get local contacts. Most business operates on a personal network basis - just because you're a coder doesn't make that any less true.

  Added - Another good source of contacts who will know people who are looking for coding work done are local IT Support companies - the type of organization who look after the hardware and systems administration for local small businesses who won't have in-house IT staff. Generally they themselves won't have a coder on the books, but will be aware if their clients are looking for work done and may pass your name along or contract you themselves.

  Dave Sherohman : Very good stuff and very true to my experience. Most of my current clients have come by way of a friend/former coworker who is now with a local IT support company of the sort described in the addition.
  From Cruachan