[consulting] What Causes Feast or Famine?

[Fred Jones]

It has been discussed here more than once that there are two main
camps of Drupal developers--those flooded with work and those
constantly looking for work. Without going into unnecessary detail
about my boring private life (or lack thereof) I would like to move
myself from the second camp into the first. :)

I am wondering therefore, what it is that people think creates for
them a flood of work? I am wondering if it's:

1. Modules you authored on drupal.org. People find you there and hire you.
2. Your fantastic site. People find you there and hire you. I doubt
this is relevant for a little guy like me however.
3. Your constant presence on d.o forums or IRC where you meet people
who want to hire you.
4. Your clients all refer to you new clients because they just love
you and they all hire you.

I hang out on a certain non-Drupal forum sometimes and I have gotten
work from that a BIT, so I know that can work. But I don't know about
d.o nor IRC nor authoring modules. As far as client referrals go, I do
have some but my clients generally either have no one to send me or
the people they do send me aren't the type I want to work for, i.e.
don't have a budget or whatever.

More than one client has said they WOULD highly recommend me, but they
don't have anyone to sell me to. Not surprising because a massage
therapist, an autistic school secretary and a car wash guy don't
necessarily spend much or any time discussing building web sites.

So I was thinking of making myself a website and then trying to put
some energy into whatever it is that might help attract more work to
me, as opposed to my current system of chasing after it.

Any ideas are appreciated. :)

Thanks,
Fred