From my admittedly difficult and possibly anomalous past experience as a freelancer for five years or so.. The most effective and long-term impact I saw in est

From my admittedly difficult and possibly anomalous past experience as a freelancer for five years or so.. The most effective and long-term impact I saw in establishing my personal brand was releasing or contributing to open-source software. It's where I proved that I can produce value for a sizable userbase, write documentation, maintain and keep improving it, overall doing professional work. I had full control of the presentation and aesthetics, for my personality to come across, and for people in the right places to notice my work. Some freelancers achieve similar effect with consistently producing quality articles and blog posts, about niche topics they're interested in. It depended on a lot of unpaid work, but I write software like I eat and sleep, so I kept releasing more into the world. Mostly I was just lucky to have made the right kind of software that a big enough market needed - which I didn't know was in demand, but stumbled into it. In retrospect, that was a way to market and advertise my brand, the skills I can offer. There must be an easier way to do it, other than hard work and luck, but I was inexperienced and had to pay my dues, until I had a regular stream of clients. The thing I did right, I believe, was to plug myself into a fairly niche community (or marketplace), and make personal connections with owners and decision-makers in the businesses.