I don't know if this counts as a "tool" per se, but I would absolutely pay a substantial portion of my billing rate (I'd start the discussion at 33%) to get an

I don't know if this counts as a "tool" per se, but I would absolutely pay a substantial portion of my billing rate (I'd start the discussion at 33%) to get an agent who found me suitable jobs and kept my pipeline full. I'd much rather get 80 hours of work a month at 2 * $RATE / 3 than get 20 hours at $RATE because I didn't have the time to go after business the way I could if I were a strict freelancer. At the going billing rates for skilled software devs, I'd be shocked if someone couldn't make it worth their while to provide such a service. I have a day job, a wife and a daughter. I want to put in about 20 hours of time a week (mostly nights after the kid's asleep) padding the emigration fund. I do not want to spend that time writing proposals for ill-specified projects. I do not want to spend my evenings talking on the phone about how I'm really not looking to leave my day job to write dairy-farm management software full time for $40k a year. I don't want to argue the terms under which I work (I work from home after hours and send daily status e-mails). I want to pad my emigration fund by doing what I do best: writing code. I would gladly pay someone to take care of all the ancillary concerns, and I don't really care if I'm not maximizing my take-home because I'm certainly not maximizing it now.