TL;DR - Decide who is your ideal client. Identify their 1) common pain points and 2) which online communities they participate in (may or may not be HN). Write advice that will help them with their pain points, and share it in those communities. This will in effect advertise that you know how to solve their problems. Don't be too modest to say you're available for consulting projects, and make it easy for people to contact you.
PS - As someone else suggested, you may want to add your contact info here. There's a big overlap between people who browse HN and people who need and have the budget/authority to hire contractors.
Around 2-3 months. Lived off savings and a credit card. First client came from a referral, but that didn't turn out to be a consistent source. First long-term client came from seeing me on HN.
If I had started with the strategy I explained above, I'd probably get the first client much sooner.
TL;DR - Decide who is your ideal client. Identify their 1) common pain points and 2) which online communities they participate in (may or may not be HN). Write advice that will help them with their pain points, and share it in those communities. This will in effect advertise that you know how to solve their problems. Don't be too modest to say you're available for consulting projects, and make it easy for people to contact you.
PS - As someone else suggested, you may want to add your contact info here. There's a big overlap between people who browse HN and people who need and have the budget/authority to hire contractors.