If they could hire someone full-time to do it, they would, I think. I say this because every single company I've consulted for has tried to pressure me into coming on full-time. I always politely decline, but it is exhausting sometimes. I remind myself that I'm fortunate and that I should be grateful for the opportunities.
Either they can't hire fast enough, or they can't have the employees deliver fast enough.
Anyway, I don't know if there's a clear pattern.
Let me just list a few examples:
1. Large company. New CTO wanted a proof-of-concept. Big company with slow teams and processes. He got me to build it fast, and demoed it to the board, and got the leadership team excited.
2. Startup. CTO and the 3 engineers were mobile devs. They were raising their next round and wanted a web version of their product. Ended up building a full product that got them much bigger traction than they expected.
3. Startup. CEO and the investors thought that the team needed to focus on X. CTO thought that Y will actually get them product-market-fit. CTO asked me to build Y, and the CEO agreed, to preserve optionality. Turns out the CTO was right.
I meet the clients f2f a lot at the beginning of the project. Then I'm off to just writing code at home until it's time to deliver the project. It's just the nature of the projects I've taken on. I'm sure there are other kinds of software consulting where you need to meet them everyday, go to their standups and things like that. Fortunately, I've avoided that. I've developed a reputation for "going off and getting it done". That's the brand. So people don't expect constant meetings.
1. Talk to people and sound like you know what you're talking about. In my (admittedly limited) experience, it's been "be opinionated, and be able to back up the opinions when challenged".
2. They mention opportunity for equity. You mention you only work for money. Sometimes they take you up on it.
3. Do a great job. They brag about you. This gets you more clients. But don't count on that. Ask for referrals.
4. Increase your rate as your utilization goes up.
Frankly, I don't know if it's a good rate. I shoot for 80% utilization of my time. If I get busier than that, I raise my rate. So that's the simple algorithm that got me to $300/hr now. I don't think I'd want higher utilization than 80% anyway. You need time to do bizdev etc.
I used to kill myself with 60 hour weeks a long time ago though. That wasn't smart.
I've never had to lower my rate. There were lean periods where I was "between projects" for a couple of months. I just considered this a much needed time off to catch up on my reading list.