First, make yourself provably valuable. As in, have a bunch of things that you can point to and say "I built these, and I can build the thing you need too". I

First, make yourself provably valuable. As in, have a bunch of things that you can point to and say "I built these, and I can build the thing you need too". It can be a startup, a live website from one of your old gigs, or (far less impressive to employers) open source stuff. More stuff is more better. Be the guy who built "x", as seen on the cover of "kickass engineer" magazine. At the same time, make sure you're not putting anybody off with your communication style. You want to be able to pass for a Silicon Valley startup employee both over email and on the phone. Communication is seriously overlooked by most developers, and I'd say it's a big factor in why some guys can negotiate $200/hr contract gigs and others have trouble finding a job at all. Just a few little red-flag type errors in your email style can drop you right back into the "$10/hr guy from India or someplace, I think" pile. Good job, by the way, being born in New York. That's your timezone, so it might as well be where people think you're from. No need to say so in as many words, but next time somebody asks, you're on "East Coast Time". You can be in Brazil again once you're in the door and delivering results. So that's it, really. Get good at what you do, make sure people know it, and that if they don't know it yet they will after a quick email back and forth. Take that $35/hr gig if it's all that's on offer now. Execute well and make sure everybody knows you did so, then ramp up your rate for the next gig. Repeat as necessary. Good luck!