Ask HN: Advice transitioning to Software Contract/consulting work?

I am curious what your best advice for successful software contracting/consulting is. I am a mid twenties full stack developer transitioning into contract work from my current employer. I’m extremely motivated to give myself the best chance possible to get good, high-value work, and minimize bad projects/clients. Put differently, I need to know how to avoid BS, low-paying work, and find interesting projects that pay well. I’m not an expert in any particular tech stack, and I don’t have a blog with thousands of fans, so I want to know how I can sell my abilities to the right kind of people. I plan to start writing regularly and attending conferences more to help with this. I’m particularly wanting to work on Clojure, Python, React, or C# projects as I am most familiar with, and enjoy those the most. Any advice about what the best avenue is to get your brand out there, leverage platforms like Upwork, or anything else really?