I had a goal in mind, my goal was not that I wanted a lot of free time to go hang out at coffee shops or to windsurf the day away and bang out a bit of code at night. Then reap huge rewards for it. That is not how the world works. I actually think my time owning my woodworking business helped me more than my comp sci degree. I taught me how business works. It taught me that I had to see what I wanted and to make a path for it, or a plan so to speak. But what did I want? I wanted an easier life. Did that mean I immediately jumped into it, no. I had to work for it.
With what I did in woodworking I had a specialty, I did custom cabinets. Really great ones too, I have all of the pictures to prove it. But in doing them I learned a lot of lessons that I think transfer over to freelancing. In my shop we had a lot of equipment, if you know much about woodworking equipment, you know that some machines can do a variety of tasks. Sometimes I would have people call me up that wanted something that was really out of what we normally do, but our equipment could do it. So I would agree to the jobs. Every one or those jobs led to a mildly satisfied customer and a lot more stress on my end. (if you want to know normally it was running custom millwork, we had the machines to do it, but we really only ran our own.) When I matured into the business I grew to learn that even though it was money right now, maybe even money I needed, it was not worth it. Our company had a specialty and it diluted that by doing other things.
Specialize
I know it really feels great to take every job that walks in the door, but really it isn't. Think about how you do things in your life. When your drain is clogged, do you call a $15hr handyman or do you call a plumber? Do you call a handyman or an electrician when you need a new plug installed? Specialties cost more. They cost more because of their knowledge and the trust put into them. Specialize in something. It can be Wordpress, Drupal, Sass, whatever, but specialize in it and be the best in it. People WILL seek you out for your specialty. People do pay more for specialist than jack of all trades, it is just the way that things are. Does it mean the jack of all trades are not smarter? No, it just means that people respect specialist.
Groundwork
This is the key part to specializing. Start laying a groundwork to what you do. Make posts, answer questions, help people. At the same time read and learn. The most important part is to make a name for yourself and you company. Become a member of communities where people read. Facebook posts to your friends are not going to get it. Wordpress developer, become active on their forums. Drupal, Joomla, ect, same advice. Be active, have a link to your site in the footer of your posts, but more over, help people. You would not believe the number of jobs that I have gotten for forum posts. They all go one of two ways, "I saw you helped this person can I pay you to help me" or "Hey thanks for the help in the forum but I don't know how to do what you said, can I pay you to do it". It really does work (also another angle is SEO which I will get to). The key is to make yourself out to be an expert in something. People contact community leaders of forums all the time for doing work.
The SEO
This is short since it does not need much explanation. Everything you do as your company online has an SEO factor. Does it mean your site is going to rank higher in the search engines, no. But does that mean that you are not going to get work from it? No. Take this wild example, what if I am searching for how to make a Wordpress plugin work with a version of Wordpress that it is not supposed to work with. I find a post where you have told another person in a pretty in depth, but programmatic manner of how to make it work. I can't do that, but I know you can. So it might be easier for me to hire you to do it and I contact you. SEO people drill into your head it is all about how your site ranks, but as a freelancer it is about how you rank. If a post on a forum is the top result for a question commonly asked, you will get work from it. I would also like to say that all freelancers need a blog. By a blog I mean a professional blog. A blog talking about what you do, tips and tricks to what you do, help for other people. Why? Because it is what people search for. Actually research what you are writing on before you write it. Lets take these two totally valid blog post topics "How to make Wordpress work with MongoDB" and "How to make your Wordpress site faster" as an example. Both are totally valid articles, heck, I would read both. But who do they appeal to? The MongoDB one will 9 times out of 10 appeal to developers. But the speed one will have a wider audience. It will have a lot more site owners read it. Developers learn from your articles and never pay you. Site owners like your ideas, processes, and want to pay you. So quit writing articles and blog posts about that funny thing that happened when you were getting coffee this week and make them work for you.
You are a company
As much as you want to be just a single person that delivers, represent yourself as a company. Create a company name, create a company profile, company website, company twitter, company facebook, ect. Legally you are a company in most US jurisdictions. So act like one. Get a tax ID number, do books, figure those things out. But why, I am a freelancer? Because big companies hire other companies, not freelancers. Sure they will hire a freelancer to do the dirty work, but do you want to do dirty work? They hire companies to figure out problems that their current staff cannot grasp or to consult to their current staff. Where do you want to be? Make yourself a company, be professional, it will lead to bigger contracts. Use we when you talk to clients, even if it is just you and your dog in your office. It makes you sound more reliable. It makes you sound more professional. Create an image. Your image is what gets you clients, it is your face, your sales department.