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I have this image in my mind about most freelancers being people who went to their 9-5 software development job for 10 years before they started to freelance.
My company which I have had for a few years have done some (when looking back at it now) very basic php/web-design freelancing for local companies. I was reading the thread about where to find freelance jobs (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1526199) and realized that there are a lot of projects that need coders out there. Having invested a good amount of my education recently into software development, project management and economics I think this would be a really good way to keep learning new things and at the same time get some pressure ( and money ) to motivate and make me prioritize the project at hand. Of course I wouldn't seek out projects that I knew were out of my current or near-future skill-set but this is probably the heart of the problem.
Do potential clients expect a certain level of expertise or are they happy as long as the product works within the boundaries of the spec and deadlines are met? Im thinking that honesty in the bidding and the continuos development process will get me a long way. By that I mean not promising deadlines that im not sure can be met and facing problems head on. But perhaps this is just naive? Also im starting to notice that the more you about something the more you realize that you still have to learn.
Also does the general rule of "work for free or full price, never for cheap" apply in this situation?
Question could probably be: How did you go from goto and general pasta to well designed beautiful code that made people write articles in your honor?
Books? Articles? Down-and-dirty coding? Finding a mentor? Doing open-source? Slaving away as a PhD student in applied mathematics and system design?