What is the best area for freelance / small business developer work - and how to find it

Question

Most freelance developers are essentially contractors - working full time and often hired through another company.

What are the best options for real freelancing or small business built around development skills? (I am only looking for local clients, odesk etc is not interesting)

Most options open for small companies are web sites. But most clients don't want to pay much, and there are lots of people that are willing to do it for very little money. Think if you want to do money that way you must be a "web site" business.

Think the best option should be to work for companies spending a lot of resources on web and db?

How could I get in touch with them?

Other ideas?

Part of my concept is to use some off-shoring to complement my skillset, so i should be able to do PHP or Drupal even if I am not at expert level.

Answer 1

Every job that is interesting you and pays ok is a good job. Whether you are building a site , maintaining a DB, build reports or program small apps.

Just look in the local ads for openings, and you will find what you want.

Answer 2

Instead of asking them what you could do you should rather tell them what you could do. Just spend some weeks building a nice software package that solves a very specific problem in a specific sector. Then all you have to do is as simple as finding 50 companies to pay 50 bucks a month. Finally, you could add features to your software for an hourly rate. Sounds much more interesting than "every job that is interesting you and pays ok", isn't it? ;)

Answer 3

I have a full time job as well as a couple of work from home jobs I spend varying amounts of time on. I think your best avenue is through knowing people. I didn't advertise for anything that I've done, but just asked around with people I knew who worked for different companies. These companies weren't software companies though so they didn't employ any developers and I was able to help them out. I also agree with @sfussenegger as finding a niche market has made more than a few people a comfortable living. You would also be surprised at how many companies have aspects of their routine that could be automated with a bit of simple code that would save the company a lot of money over the course of a year.