Stop Freelancing

I think this is where it helps to be part of a co-founder in a small consultancy rather than a "freelancer". If a customer asks me to build something in framework A with features X , Y and Z I can probably do that, but as you say unless you have a strong reputation in a specific niche that makes you rare, you are competing against everyone else who can do the same thing.

OTOH a customer with a bigger budget who is looking for a more holistic solution may also want infrastructure provisioning and management, SEO and color scheme designed specifically to appeal to their target demographic. It's unlikely that any single person can do all of these things, at least to a level of quality that would justify a significant fee. So either you need a reliable bunch of subcontractors who you can retain for X days/month or you need to partner with somebody with complimentary skillsets.

There is a big mindset shift between freelancer, to contractor, to consultant and beyond. All, however, can be relevant and it's important to know which one you can provide and what a customer is looking for.

I have a post somewhere here on HN outlining it if I can find it.. :)

I'm no expert, but I think that your portfolio is HUGELY more convincing than your business site. I get that your business can't really sell your skills, but it can sell your past projects, just to give some idea of the scale of the things you've done.

For example, you say "Enterprise . Mobile . Web" but don't have a single example there. I tried to click on them, but they don't link anywhere. If I pay you, will I get a website like this one? Will it be completely static? If I ask for a webapp, will people have to interact with it through the company email?

Some more content (portfolio, pictures of your apps, tech/product/opinion blog, etc), some kind of branding (logo, etc), or social stuff (twitter feed/LinkedIn/testimonials) or something would be a huge help, because it'd help convince people that you actually did some stuff, and have been doing it recently.

Sorry if I sound cynical--it sounds like you've done some really cool stuff. And your portfolio page does reflect that. But it doesn't really come through on the business webpage at all. Maybe you're just too busy working on cool stuff to fix up your webpage :-)

That is a fantastic point. Where would IDEO be if David Kelley didn't first make the leap to David Kelley Design?

I'm hoping to do this by the end of the year or soon thereafter, just so I can start working on being an employee (W-2) of my own company.

My motivation was listening to Gina Trapani (of Lifehacker, etc.) talk on the In Beta podcast (http://5by5.tv/inbeta/73) about how she and her partner in applying for a mortgage basically were having to leave out Gina's income because as a self-employed and 1099 contractor with multiple revenue streams her "career" is too complicated in ways that banks are just going to ignore/reject anyway.

I consider myself lucky in that I bought my home (and signed my mortgage) in the waning days of my time at a midsize company, but I don't expect to live here forever and with the way banking changed after 2008 I'm sure I'd have a very hard time getting a mortgage now even if I was putting down 50% of the purchase price up front.