Becoming a contractor programmer in the UK

But my biggest question is where do you find a client ?

Is there a website (like a jobs website) for contract work, besides elance and the like ? Yeah, I can google it, but it's usually just a waste of time.

Is there any serious place where an experienced developer can meet serious clients ? I mean clients willing to pay for quality work so I can make a living similar to a corporate job ?

When I arrived in London (as a foreigner fresh off the boat) I had about 4 weeks worth of money. I couch surfed and worked the recruiters endlessly and landed a job in 10 days. It wasn't the greatest job but it was a start - a 3 month contract building a new system. It's amazing how motivated you can be when you see your bank accounts date with destiny. After the contract was signed I used the remainder of my cash and got a 'bedsit' - a tiny room - and asked for my first weeks pay to be paid on Friday afternoon. Within a month I had a place to rent, a social scene and was busy working on getting the next job.

So if you don't have any dependents I think you can take the high risk plunge and go for it. Certainly the best decision I ever made in my entire life - and by that I mean life changing in a way that I cannot even imagine how my life would have been had I stayed on my prior path.

Use HMRC PAYE Tools to report each salary payment you make, and pay any National Insurance if applicable (which it won't be if you keep you salary below £671 a month).

Use the same tool to report any expense payments each May (form P11D).

Use Companies House WebFiling to submit your annual return (a short submission confirming some details about your company's directors and shareholdings etc.) each company year end.

Use HRMC's Online services to submit your corporation tax and accounts nine months after each year end. I pay £45 each year for collection of Excel templates from http://www.diyaccounting.co.uk/ to record my accounts which produces a mockup of the HMRC web form with the fields filled in.

Pay yourself a dividend one or twice a year and find a Word template to print out a record of the payment and the board meeting you had to decide on it.

Finally, use HMRC Online Self Assessment to submit your personal tax return each January, which you may already be doing anyway.

Looking at all this now it seems like a lot, but it's not as bad it sounds. I suppose you've got to have something of an interest in learning how a business is run to justify it. On the other hand you can save your company a tidy sum, plus as a company director you're legally responsible for the accuracy of the various submissions anyway, whether an accountant does it all for you or not, so you may as well have a sound understanding of it all I say. Also, I don't know whether this is the really the case or not but I've a theory that the more you run your operation like a proper business the less likely you're going to come a cropper of an IR45 disguised employment judgement, which could be severely financially damaging.

Running your own operation like this will put you in a better position for trying out any side projects I believe, and of course it will all stand you in good stead when you finally hit on the world changing idea you've been waiting for and your one man band blossoms into a large corporation (although do then get some accountants - but at least you'll have some idea what they're up to).