How do you get new freelance jobs/contracts?
kungfooey: Craigslist is a crapshoot. As are most other online gig-engines (elance, odesk, etc). Granted, I have very little experience with them, but just browsing them reveals poor leads, poor pay, and you're generally competing with guys in eastern Europe and India who are going to eat your lunch with low rates.The alternative is setting up locally. All decent-sized cities have networking opportunities, things like "Business Networking International" where it's highly structured towards referrals (and while useful, sort of MLM-ish), or things like Open Coffee or Geek Breakfast. Also there are usually user groups in your preferred industry or programming language (PHP, Python, etc). Get out there. One of the biggest mistakes I see newbie freelancers/contractors make is that they expect jobs to come to them. If you troll the internet for leads you're also competing against a bunch of other yahoos who are sitting in their pajamas. Your leads will be fewer, and of  a lower quality. Get out there, shake some hands, show your face, and hopefully when people think, "Hey, I need a [X]" they will think of you. If you get out there, you never know what will generate business. I had one fifteen minute conversation with a guy and he has been directly responsible at least a quarter of my business for 2008 via referrals.Obviously referrals from existing happy clients are paramount. Whenever I complete a project, I always mention that the best sort of compliment is a referral. If they're happy with you, they won't mind giving your name if they know that you can do the job.I don't blog much. I do use twitter, but found it to only be marginally useful in generating business. It is somewhat good at staying in touch with past clients. LinkedIn is mostly a rolodex, good for little else than getting spam from recruiters.