Exactly. Freelancing has a lot more control, but less money, and you bid on jobs like an agency would.
Contracting is basically a full time job, but you own the company, can claim expenses / equipment / etc, and otherwise, it works like a normal paid job. You dont, EVER, bid on jobs, you get hired for a set period. Companies like this as it's an _operational_ expense not a HR expense, and chances are, they have a hiring freeze :)
When you're starting out from a salaried full time job and asking HN how you do contracting, they're the same thing.
If you already have clients lined up where you can do work as or within a company without first freelancing, then you're probably not in HN asking how to do it.
No, they're not. You can get a contract role by talking to a recruiter or going on a recruitment website, without any kind of online portfolio or presence. For the freelancing stuff, you need to go through the dance you laid out.
I suppose that's another way to do it. But I can only speak to my experience, and I admittedly don't have much experience with recruiters. I've never used recruiters for either freelancing or contracting and I have a freelanced in several years.
Edit: also, many of the other comments here were, get a client, not speak to a recruiter, so this was somewhat a response to that add well.
I think they also missed the background discussion.
In the UK, permanent salaries are very low compared to other english speaking markets. Several people (self included) mentioned contracting. This is distinct from freelancing in that it usually for a company running a project but in need of some specific skills for a fixed time at a daily rate, rather than asking you to make something for a fixed price.
I see them as distinct career paths, and I'm pretty sure the question was aimed at this.
I'm curious: How do you think these terms are defined, and how do you think they differ? I have never before seen anyone object to usage in the way you did there; in this context, surely almost any (reasonably sane) freelancer will also be a contractor, and almost anyone who is contracting with a client will be doing it on a freelance basis?
In London (which is the context of this) they mean very different things. A freelancer tries to build a brand, and complete projects. A contractor generally doesn't, and is just a temporary employee without benefits, who's being paid a substantial premium for being a temporary employee without benefits.
Don't tell HMRC you said that, or the PCG. If any contractual engagement were necessarily disguised employment the way you just explained it, the former would be bringing in a small fortune in extra tax revenues while the latter would wheel out the lawyers.
I'm getting the feeling that rather like employees who've never considered going independent, there are quite a few people posting here who work as contractors in the sense you're describing (which I'm not saying is incorrect, just incomplete) and don't realise that there is a wider world where maybe other contractors don't work the same way.
