I have been consulting either freelance or through owning my own firm now since roughly 1999. Networking is the primary way to find and win work. Elance/Odesk

I have been consulting either freelance or through owning my own firm now since roughly 1999. Networking is the primary way to find and win work. Elance/Odesk and the sorts are worse than useless for a US based person as they are all a race to the bottom. Also, you will find that the clients that pay you the least are the biggest pain. Everything you can do to build yourself up in the community helps. Writing a blog, putting yourself out there, contributing to open source projects etc all count a lot. But nothing beats talking to people and winning their trust because then they will turn to you and give you a shot on a project. If you can make yourself a niche where people seek you out for knowledge over some specific in demand tech that is awesome. But that usually takes more time then getting out and meeting people to get work. So you should do both, but just recognize one has quicker payoffs than the other, usually. When you are starting out stay away from RFP's, the process and overhead to properly answer RFP's takes more than you can afford when starting. A lesson I learned the hard way early in my consulting. Also, find a consulting firm that needs some additional help and contract to them a few times on their client projects. A lot of times this is a way to broaden your network and your skills to find your own work. Plus you can see how they are doing things and then take what's good and replicate or improve on it.