This is a terrible idea because it misunderstands where the value is in the consulting/freelancing transaction.
People who pay 1099 contractors to build software are virtually never doing that because they think software is cool and they'd like to watch some get built.
They are building software because they have some business problem that needs to get solved, such as converting visitors to their website into Twitter followers or credit card subscription signups. The business problems are things like "we have people hitting our website and we a grip on getting more people to do that, but we don't have a way of profiting from those hits, and we think selling t-shirts on the site is a good way to do it".
They are turning to consultants because they are not confident in their ability to get the project done in-house. Maybe doing it in-house would distract their team from a more important project. Maybe they don't have an internal team and (rightly) believe that if they tried to hire one, they'd probably go through 3 different leads over 18 months before they got a productive team going.
What consulting clients are buying is determinism and flexibility. They have a project that needs to complete this quarter.
When you offer your services to those people for free, you are inherently undermining "determinism". Not only does it not take a genius to compare the market rate for software development to "free" and ask what's wrong with you, but also it's intuitively obvious that you can't sustainably deliver services for free.
Half a project is worth either zero or less than zero. So what has your client gained from this transaction? They put out an RFP for the project as a way of eliminating staffing risk, and you responded by offering them more risk. Yay!
People who pay 1099 contractors to build software are virtually never doing that because they think software is cool and they'd like to watch some get built.
They are building software because they have some business problem that needs to get solved, such as converting visitors to their website into Twitter followers or credit card subscription signups. The business problems are things like "we have people hitting our website and we a grip on getting more people to do that, but we don't have a way of profiting from those hits, and we think selling t-shirts on the site is a good way to do it".
They are turning to consultants because they are not confident in their ability to get the project done in-house. Maybe doing it in-house would distract their team from a more important project. Maybe they don't have an internal team and (rightly) believe that if they tried to hire one, they'd probably go through 3 different leads over 18 months before they got a productive team going.
What consulting clients are buying is determinism and flexibility. They have a project that needs to complete this quarter.
When you offer your services to those people for free, you are inherently undermining "determinism". Not only does it not take a genius to compare the market rate for software development to "free" and ask what's wrong with you, but also it's intuitively obvious that you can't sustainably deliver services for free.
Half a project is worth either zero or less than zero. So what has your client gained from this transaction? They put out an RFP for the project as a way of eliminating staffing risk, and you responded by offering them more risk. Yay!