Having done contract work for ~20 years without using any platforms, I would say start locally to find clients. It'll be harder now due to Covid but with no network or online presence beforehand no one will know you exist.
The long haul would be to start blogging about what you plan to do contract work for and build up an audience but this may take years to materialize.
Initially I wouldn't worry about business cards, resumes, paid ads or anything like that. Just focus on things that will help folks make more money. That's really what it boils down to. For a lot of software development related gigs not too many people hiring contract workers care about formal education or certificates. It's a matter of they pay you $X but you return a multiple of $X in value to their business.
For pricing yourself, I think that'll depend on what you plan to do contract work for. For a quick and dirty ballpark you could take your salary hourly rate and add 30-50%. That's because it's usually substantially cheaper to hire contract workers since there's no health benefits or major costs of hiring. Plus you typically go in to address a specific issue so it's efficient to hire a contract worker for let's say 2 months vs a full time salary with yearly raises, 401k matching, etc.. Your taxes are also going to be more complicated as a contract worker if you live in the US. These are a few things to consider when pricing yourself.
> how do i find anyone if i don’t live in a big city and don’t know anyone?
I was in the same position. I lived in the suburbs and started right after graduating high school. I ended up writing about how I got started here: https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/how-to-start-a-successful-fre..., most things still apply today (minus covid restrictions).
> why would anyone read my blog?
A lot of this world revolves around problem -> solution. If you can write about a topic that solves a problem someone might have or at least get them closer to solving their problem then you're in a good spot.
Think about it, if you're Googling for a specific programming problem and you run across a blog post that resonates with where you're at and helps you solve the thing you're struggling with, does it really matter who wrote it? For me it doesn't. Sure credentials help and I tend to ask myself how they applied their solution but I won't discount a post entirely based on the author's credentials.
Because you’d write high quality articles that help people solve problems, share them around as you write them, slowly grow some viewership that way, and eventually start to get organic visitors from search engines. It’s not very fast though, and it helps to know what you hope to get out of it, so you can target your writing.
I know people who get freelance leads from their writing, but I don’t get many myself. Just a few over the years I’ve been writing. I suspect this is because most of my articles are aimed at beginners, though. I would guess that higher-level stuff would attract more leads. One other benefit is that you have something to point to - I can say “Yeah I know React pretty well, I’ve been writing about it for about 5 years <here> and I wrote a book on it.”
Start or contribute to an open source project, then offer consulting services to your users. If you can solve one of their problems indirectly through your published code and/or writing, they already trust your technical abilities to some extent.
The long haul would be to start blogging about what you plan to do contract work for and build up an audience but this may take years to materialize.
Initially I wouldn't worry about business cards, resumes, paid ads or anything like that. Just focus on things that will help folks make more money. That's really what it boils down to. For a lot of software development related gigs not too many people hiring contract workers care about formal education or certificates. It's a matter of they pay you $X but you return a multiple of $X in value to their business.
For pricing yourself, I think that'll depend on what you plan to do contract work for. For a quick and dirty ballpark you could take your salary hourly rate and add 30-50%. That's because it's usually substantially cheaper to hire contract workers since there's no health benefits or major costs of hiring. Plus you typically go in to address a specific issue so it's efficient to hire a contract worker for let's say 2 months vs a full time salary with yearly raises, 401k matching, etc.. Your taxes are also going to be more complicated as a contract worker if you live in the US. These are a few things to consider when pricing yourself.