Do you rely on random calls from agents throughout the day to setup your next role or do you have a couple you rely on? How many calls / emails do you get a day?
Half my contracts are through agents, I spend a lot longer than I'd like to admit on my LinkedIn profile. One agent has admitted they have a 30% margin which explains the ~1,000 phone calls and emails I got last year.
I run a blog, I'm active on Twitter and I've worked with a lot of different businesses and coworkers since I started my career so this is where the other half of my contracts come from.
I've heard from someone at (Big Hadoop Consultancy) that they send consultants out to train and do POVs paying the consulant £1,200 / day so there should be some growth in my day rate to come.
It's probably worth mentioning I only sell my time in one week blocks. I had two contracts this year where a client was having some troubles with Kafka on AWS. The first problem was taken care of in an hour in a half but they were still billed for a week. Same thing a few weeks later when Zookeeper was feeling upset.
Are you finding it easier or harder to find contracts? What is your average downtime between contracts?