I got back into FFXI and while I keep enjoying it, I decided to quit for a simple reason.
I'm going to be self-sufficient this year.
In this economy you can never have too much work, and to be honest, to a freelancer this is a goldmine. This might sound difficult to believe, but I'll share with you a few tips about freelancing today.
What can I expect?
Expect competition. Furious competition.
Maybe you still have your job, maybe you don't; but I can assure you many of your comrades are out on the streets. Just like you would have fierce competition for a full-time job right now, expect a lot of competition for contract jobs. You're going to need to be faster, cheaper (I'll explain in a minute), and better than all of them. You achieve this by picking your battles and by befriending as many people as you can. Most of my gigs come from friends I've made along the way that can't take a project for some reason or that need assistance with a project they have already taken on.
Where are the Jobs?
Everywhere.
While going into past workplaces and recommending they update their Point of Service systems with one that I can custom build for them has not gone well (I swear I will change that video store's cataloguing system if it's the last thing I do!), I don't think it was a waste of time. If I see a system that I can make better, I immediately talk to whoever is in charge and leave my card. These are mainly just practice for when you really need to pitch your work to somebody, since they will mostly be happy with their current system, but if they do decide to change it they'll think of you.
Talk to your friends. Let them know that you have some extra time now that your WoW character is in hiatus and you would like some extra work. Maybe they'll hear something and they'll pass it along. It's better if you have a whole bunch of people with their eyes open than just you. One point I'd like to stress, however: talk to your friends, do not whine to your friends. We want good leads, not somebody who has no idea what he or she is talking about that mentioned something about a website. We are trying to make more with our time, not waste it.
Finally, scouring Craigslist and other job boards will be where the bulk comes from. With all the people looking at job boards these days, a well-constructed résumé will go a long way. Lots of companies cut in-house staff and are looking for contractors to pick up the slack. This is where most of the opportunity lies if you are not friends with many people or would rather not discuss your job search.
How do I choose a Project for Myself?
This is going to be the most important part of your new solo career. Picking your projects is important because if you pick too big of a project you might end up losing money in other, smaller, opportunities. What has worked for me personally is making sure all the projects I take are about 10–20 hours of work. This is because I have a day job and I have weeklong projects there. I really prefer to just have projects that take a weekend or two of part-time work rather than slave over it for weeks and weeks.
If you are looking for work and you have the time, longer projects pay more. Try and find projects that require a specific rare skill that you possess: process automation, bug-testing, and flash games come to mind as things I always see demand for but not enough supply.
I try to take projects that do not require me to build a whole CMS from scratch, and, in the interest of full disclosure, I preach WordPress and Joomla. These open-source CMS systems are very coder-friendly. I can do band websites and small community sites in no time. I just have to get the theme together and build custom plugins for the user—the whole permalinks system, back-end editing, publishing, comments, and user system is provided for me. This is something I tell the client beforehand, of course. I explain that if he wanted me to build a completely custom solution that was nearly as polished, the price would go up (a lot). Most of the time, they really have no problems with this.
Everything Else
Once you are doing freelance projects you have to watch your own back. This means you need to stay on top of projects and clients. It is your responsibility to have a concise list of deliverables that you can check off as you go along so that you understand when the project has officially ended. Don't get dragged into endless projects that don't pay you what you are worth.
Also, please, enjoy your work!