I did this for a bit and gave up. While you have a lot of freedom doing this it's just really risky working with small local companies. They are highly sensitiv

I did this for a bit and gave up. While you have a lot of freedom doing this it's just really risky working with small local companies. They are highly sensitive to price. In contrast one of the easiest/chillest ways to contract is to do by-the-hour for small software companies. They are not as sensitive to price because almost any rate you charge them under some amoung (say $150/hr doing 20-30 hours/week) is less than they'd pay for an experienced salaried dev when you include healthcare and all other costs for fulltime employees. And they can drop you whenever and vice versa. The big challenge I have is breaking into project-based work for good companies. Getting paid by the hour is easy and pays work but is really tiresome. You can't scale your work if you get paid by the hour. The only way to scale is getting paid by the project and taking more projects on (and eventually hiring people).