Stop Freelancing

If you're a self-identified say, "Ruby freelancer", the value proposition is "I am an independent Ruby developer for hire". For staff augmentation gigs or applying for a FT position, this is all well and good, because whoever's hiring is looking for warm bodies with specific technical capabilities.

However, many companies are looking to solve specific business problems and might not know how. Simply hiring a developer who happens to know Ruby doesn't guarantee that the problem will be solved — it's a huge risk. It's sort of like saying, "all I need is someone who knows how to swing hammers if I want to build my wife and I's dream home."

Mitigating that risk means stepping away from the " freelancer" title and becoming a business consultant who happens to use e.g. Ruby to solve business problems. On your end, this is going to require less time spent thinking about the technology, and more about the path to solving the underlying problem at hand. From the perspective of a client, this is a much safer bet. And when there's less risk involved, clients are willing to spend more. And treat you more as a consultant. And you'll be happier, your closing rates will go up, etc.

I can't imagine it's that difficult. People do it all the time for all sorts of personal businesses.

I haven't looked into it in-depth as I'm not at that stage yet, but I eventually plan to do the same thing -- although I hope to scale freelancing into a much bigger business if at all possible

As far as overhead goes - currently it's mostly the same, but part of my motivation to go the "company" route is the ability to hire someone else in the near future. Once that starts to happen there will be a lot more overhead to consider regarding labor costs, employee income taxes, hardware, etc.

I'm the president of my own corporation, s corp, but have never obtained or heard of the term 'business license' except informally.