Don't. :)<p>Seriously... Free-lancing is harder work than any job you've ever had. You have to be able to handle the work you take on as well as doing the accounting and bringing in the sales. It's just not feasible for most people without really working your ass off.<p>And then what do you get? You certainly don't have a business, because it's unsellable as such, and it doesn't exist if you walk away. What you have is the most time-consuming job possible. You didn't even get rid of your boss... In fact now you've got more bosses.<p>Speaking from almost a decade of freelance experience, I'd suggest you either get some partners or get a job.
Find one client at a low rate and please the hell out of them. Then find another client, but increase your rates. Do the same; do anything it takes to get the job done ahead of schedule and to make the client as impressed as possible.<p>Eventually you'll find the ceiling in terms of how much you can charge per hour, but you'll have an entire mountain of reputation built by being fast, dedicated, and reliable.<p>I'm a student and due to a family lawsuit (dad's business partners ran off with the company's bonding money, fitting him with the bill) I can't get student loans so I freelance to pay my bills and to fund my own projects. My main philosophy when I'm working with a client (and I tell them this) is "the sooner I get in and out with this project, the sooner you do too" and I then sit down with them if they are available and work on it until it is done. It's not as feasible for programming as it is for designing, but the same focus on speed is killer as a freelancer.<p>I'm still finding work at $100/hr as a 22 year old freelancer, so soon I can finally begin leveraging my personal brand equity and my time to creating more passive sources of income, (i.e.: services and products).<p>Hope this helped a bit.
If you want to get serious fast, go to tech-related conferences. Take a stack of business cards. Shake hands. Constantly. Arrive early, don't eat lunch, stay late.<p>Be focused on how you can help people's business, even if you can't help them directly. (Don't make it all about "me, me, me". God, I hate when people are like.) You aren't trying to make a sale, you are building a relationship one handshake at a time. Directly or indirectly, you'll find plenty of business.
Please only consider this as a last resort (which it may be, in this economy).<p>Here are some notes from my own experience here:<p>1. Small, manageable deliverables. Always error on caution and honesty, instead of optimism and salesmanship.<p>2. If your customer (who you should just call your boss, if there's only 1) isn't technical, you'll hate life. You may as well be selling corn futures to a martian.<p>3. Two new phrases which will dominate your life: Requirements Management, Customer Expectations Management.<p>4. Find customers by going to user groups/mailing lists for the technologies you're good at.<p>5. If you have to integrate with any other software system, make sure you have access to enough information/support to handle hard-to-track bugs. The worst place to be is a remote freelancer guessing at what's going on, billing by the hour.
If you are in a country where cost of living is low, then elance.com and other similar sites are an option. Competition there is extremely fierce, don't get into underbidding wars.
Much better would be to work on projects where you do get some face time with the client.
Most of the time with freelance coding potential clients want to see evidence of previous projects, or personal projects So to extend on what others have stated here... network --> work on personal projects --> practice --> ??? --> profit!
I actually do have a "secret" method: Datacenters. If you're a programmer/network/system guy there is no faster way to get lots of clients than meeting people in datacenters. They're the most qualified leads you'll ever find.
I second two things, the blog, and the previous projects. People want to see that you get things done. So if you can whip up an amazing project, then they'll know you can get their stuff done as well.The blog/website is the place to showcase that.<p>For example, if you design webpages and want to attract people looking for you to design their Wordpress sites, create a really great free theme. The better your work, the more people will notice it.
IRC is your friend. I have gotten almost all my best jobs from corporations/people on an IRC channel looking for a contract for assistance doing X.<p>Replace X with your specialty, and find the associated Freenode channel.<p>Depending on your field, mailing lists may be useful as well.