Hi! I have alternated between contracting and standard employment a number of times over the years.
You should start with one person who's willing to hire you. This will likely be somebody you have worked with in the past, or some close associate of theirs. Ideally, would be a part-time gig so that you don't have to give up your day job. That will let you set up the necessary systems and habits and get a better sense of whether this is for you.
If you don't have that person already at hand, you can instead start work on your sales process, which will likely mainly be a networking process. Set up time to talk to trusted former colleagues. Tell them you're thinking of switching to contract work. Ask them about how they perceive you, and in particular what kind of work they think you'd be great at. Then ask them what kinds of contract work they're seeing happen now, or have heard about happening. Lastly, ask them if there's anybody they know you should talk to, including both contractors and the kinds of people who hire contractors. If you're lucky, they'll say, "Oh, yeah, let me introduce you to Jane."
If you keep this up, you will eventually find somebody who might want to hire you. Then you're into a negotiation and contracting process. There are plenty of books about this, and I'd encourage you to read a few of them, as it's not much like normal job hiring. (The only one I remember is "Getting to Yes", which is very helpful theory, but you'll also want stuff on the nuts and bolts of it.)
My big pieces of advice: 1) Both contract work and payments are much less reliable than jobs. Keep a big cash buffer. Right after the dot-com bust I would have made better money picking recycling out of trash cans than doing contract programming, but I got through because I had saved up. Later that saved me when a client tried to stiff me for $40k 2) For getting future work, it's important to leave everybody with a good impression of you. So do you best to be kind, warm, competent, professional, and polished. 3) Outsource the headache. Find yourself a good lawyer and tax accountant. Consider using a billing firm that just takes care of all the paperwork and pays you on a W2. Focus your energy on the three core things: doing the actual work, managing clients, and finding new work. 4) Don't expect to make more than with a job. You might! But non-billable activities can eat up a lot of your time, and many contractors do it because they like the freedom.
Good luck! Feel free to drop me a line if I can answer more questions for you.
You should start with one person who's willing to hire you. This will likely be somebody you have worked with in the past, or some close associate of theirs. Ideally, would be a part-time gig so that you don't have to give up your day job. That will let you set up the necessary systems and habits and get a better sense of whether this is for you.
If you don't have that person already at hand, you can instead start work on your sales process, which will likely mainly be a networking process. Set up time to talk to trusted former colleagues. Tell them you're thinking of switching to contract work. Ask them about how they perceive you, and in particular what kind of work they think you'd be great at. Then ask them what kinds of contract work they're seeing happen now, or have heard about happening. Lastly, ask them if there's anybody they know you should talk to, including both contractors and the kinds of people who hire contractors. If you're lucky, they'll say, "Oh, yeah, let me introduce you to Jane."
If you keep this up, you will eventually find somebody who might want to hire you. Then you're into a negotiation and contracting process. There are plenty of books about this, and I'd encourage you to read a few of them, as it's not much like normal job hiring. (The only one I remember is "Getting to Yes", which is very helpful theory, but you'll also want stuff on the nuts and bolts of it.)
My big pieces of advice: 1) Both contract work and payments are much less reliable than jobs. Keep a big cash buffer. Right after the dot-com bust I would have made better money picking recycling out of trash cans than doing contract programming, but I got through because I had saved up. Later that saved me when a client tried to stiff me for $40k 2) For getting future work, it's important to leave everybody with a good impression of you. So do you best to be kind, warm, competent, professional, and polished. 3) Outsource the headache. Find yourself a good lawyer and tax accountant. Consider using a billing firm that just takes care of all the paperwork and pays you on a W2. Focus your energy on the three core things: doing the actual work, managing clients, and finding new work. 4) Don't expect to make more than with a job. You might! But non-billable activities can eat up a lot of your time, and many contractors do it because they like the freedom.
Good luck! Feel free to drop me a line if I can answer more questions for you.