alt Hacker NewsWorking as a feeelance consultant means you have to do marketing AND sales. (and backend paperwork as well). You need to be able to float through stretches of no work, and you need to be able to deal with clients who won't pay you.
Your product is yourself, so you start with brand building. What are your differentiators? (human) Networking is the most common way to market your services, but some write books, speak at conferences, have a substack, and blog too.
Setting rates and closing sales is another challenge. There are whole schools of materials to help with this.
Lastly remember you are trading your time for money. Your time includes the marketing, sales, and finance/taxes/billing. You may need liability insurance as well. With all that said your time is finite and not scalable - even if you charge top dollar there is a ceiling on how much you can make. Don't expect to get rich in this line of work by itself. (Side note: "ownership" - real estate, stocks, intellectual property, etc - are the scalable wealth builders)
I went down this route for a while, but ultimately decided I would rather just do the technical work and leave the rest to others.
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I think this is under appreciated. I also had my stint (some years) of freelance and found that my general take home pay was too low.
That said. When staying in a job skill atrophy is a very real thing.
As nassim talen would say, it is less risky to be a contractor.
This 100%. Just to give another viewpoint on this, having just started going full time on my solo agency, I actually love doing the sales and marketing stuff and scoping the work for clients. Yes, it does take a lot of time away from pure technical work but I do enjoy the balance of it. So, it does depend on your own interests and how you like to spend your time. Freelancing/Consulting is definitely not for everyone. And tbh, lets see maybe in a year or two I will be fed up of the sales/marketing stuff too.
One thing I will say though is that, it also comes with a lot of flexibility and freedom and you set our own hours and location which in itself is very valuable. Of course has its own pros and cons and you have to be quite disciplined to begin with.