Best way to get freelance work without being treated like a commodity code monkey?
mahmud: 1) Escrow based freelance sites are a scam. Rentacoder is an outright scam. Odesk will have a little nice timer on the desk and the project owner will be able to track your progress as 1second precision. Too micromanaged.2) There is nothing inherently precious about an "American Programmer", Yourdon's 15 year old polemic notwithstanding.3) Craigslist. Nice portfolio. Cocktail parties. You will end up doing software, hardware and websites, prepare for that. You will end up moving to the business side of things, asking management types what they need done and you will be writing tens of emails a day in correspondence, meeting people face to face and juicing software requirements out of one off-remarks that people make. You might also end up becoming an integrator or procure hardware and software licenses.Just don't expect to write fancy systems software for a living and brush up on your PHP and system administration. It's a million-hat job.