Freelancing has a bad reputation, and it won't get you any money. Totally not worth doing that, IMO. I'll recommend to stay away from freelancing, and try to get a permanent job.
Sorry, but that is completely wrong. I have been freelancing full-time for almost 12 years already and before that part-time that since I graduated. You can definitely make a good living from it but you'll need to build up contacts to get customers. A good start would be to put an advertisement in the 'work wanted' section on this forum and see where it goes. But then again, freelancing is not very everyone just as a permanent job is not something for me. I have worked at nice companies and have had really nice jobs (don't get me wrong) but it never felt like something I'd want to do until retirement.
I think you're right, but it also really depends what kind of "freelance" work you do.
I also don't get where the bad reputation comes from (you can always replace it for contractor btw).
There are some extremely skilled people in the freelance business.
If you can find your niche, it pays an awful lot more than a regular 9-5 job.
Especially in the fields of FPGA, RF or like DDR4/DDR5 computing designs.
Thanks to Covid as well as the current chip shortages, this can sometimes also change drastically.
The main difference is that as a freelancers or one man business, you also have to carry the hat of the marketeer, administration and sales departments. Unless your in such a lucky niche that customers almost automatically will come to you.
It happens, but it's not standard.
But yeah, there is actually great lack of any good websites or communities for freelancers.
Even finding another freelancer or contractor to do work for, or ask for work that are in the same mindset seems almost impossible sometimes.
Often people who basically live next to each other, don't seem to be aware of each other's existence even.