I've been a freelance web developer for some time now (among other things), and I've decided to share one of my primary sources of very profitable leads. I pitch proposals to public companies, and it's a lot easier than you'd think. All public companies are required to have websites and many of them are very poorly designed in FrontPage with the minimum required IR (investor relations) tools. Properly pitched, these are the ideal clients as they are great references ("public company" is a strong term) and many of them have very deep pockets for projects and future support. There are thousands out there and they are easy leads! I'd recommend giving it a try... Here's a detailed overview of how I did it: http://www.makescratch.com/find-lucrative-web-development-jobs/