Hi neptune,
in order to become a successful freelancer you need to discover a niche in the market and you'll have to be specialised for that.
When I started my electronic shop(s) they could hardly feed a familiy.
So I looked for something putting in my work and found it inadvertantly being told by a friend of mine.
He worked for a company building variable pitch propeller fans for air movement in big buildings like government offices, hospitals and industrial plants.
The entire setup was at fault right from planning in many cases and the company had to take a lot of enquires - not resulting from the quality and performance of the fans and the connected controller, but mainly from faulty aerodynamic planning.
I got my first "test job" correcting for the the false setup at a large BMW-sales office (five stories high) where employees suffered from exhausted air without sufficient fresh (and filtered) air for replenishment.
I measured all air outlets in individual rooms and came to the conclusion that they just got a spoonful of fresh air within a given time.
Checking the fans everything was OK, but not so in the air ducts and channels.
I suggested several modifications and had them built in according to my advice. Within three days everyone had fresh (and heated) air in every room.
From that day on my reputation was already good enough to be called to construction sites all over Europe and correct for planning errors.
I didn't care when construction company employees tried to make jokes about me, like saying: "Here comes Zons electronics - the entire company". (I also did customized circuits to interface the control computer into BMS (building management system)).
When I finally got out of business after 18 years of traveling (very tiring to make between 80,000 and 100,000 km per year) on roads and autobahns, I really felt satisfied with what I had achieved.
Many companies didn't care for the money they spent for me. They just wanted me to appear quickly to save further cost of e.g. 16 engine test booths standing still because of air movement problems each costing 15,000EURO per day without working.
Sit down and give my story a little thought.
If you can't be the greatest in your job you better forget about it!
Regards
Boncuk