Caveat that this isn't the perspective you've asked for, but as someone who's hired multiple freelance developers what often helps me choose to work with someon

Caveat that this isn't the perspective you've asked for, but as someone who's hired multiple freelance developers what often helps me choose to work with someone is a combination of: 1. their work (is it impressive? is it relevant to the project we want help for?), 2. their personality (is this someone we could work well with as a team? We're a small, remote team so communication is extra-important) 3. their references (did someone I trust refer them? have they worked on projects or for people or companies I know? If not, is there some other way to vet experience)? In the past, I've often found folks we've hired as freelancers either via their work (a cool project), their writing (e.g. technical blog posts), or communities we're mutually in where I've gotten a sense of them (alumni networks if we worked at the same place before, Slack groups etc.). It might be worth joining (if you're not already in) communities like rand or CTO lunches (if you're relatively senior, hard to say from the post) that have regular forums for folks to share if they're looking for / offering work as well. The nextplay newsletters also regularly list roles but I think those are more full-time jobs vs. freelance. I think if you're really unsure on how to start you could look at a platform like upwork or fiverr but I don't know if that's really what you're asking about here (I interpreted the question more as how do you go freelance and find your first few clients).