General tips...

On Odesk, Elance, etc. Go for projects from buyers who have a history of picking projects. Stay away from people who make lots of listings but never pick a provider. Don't neglect new buyers with no history, but don't expect a high rate of being picked up from them. Make sure the listing is strong, well fleshed out, etc. If it's a two liner then stay away.

Don't do scatter shot if you can avoid it. The more niche the better. If you can position yourselves as an expert in X rather than "we will take on anything" then you will have a better chance of standing out and less competition. Hit a good niche and you can land nearly every project.

Do a good explanation of how you will tackle their project rather than just a general "this is who we are and this is what we can do" sort of proposal. The more specifics the better for standing out. Giving them information they need to know is a great way to get them to contact you asking more questions.

Try to go for project pricing rather than hourly pricing. A project which will bring you in $100 / hour of development with project pricing will look better than charging $50 each hour. Hourly rates shouldn't matter anyways as it's really about the ROI.

Look for gems where you know the other developers don't know what they are bidding on. Sometimes you can find projects where the other developers don't know what they are bidding on but you know that you can knock it out in little time and still get a great rate even by undercutting the other crazies. Don't undercut, just set your bid around the top of the others.

Sometimes if you need more info, just set your bid to something crazy like $1 and then ask for more information. This will make you stand out and obviously they won't hold you to the $1 bid.

Figure out what sort of work you would like to get and then run a Twitter bot to look for certain keywords which indicate people are looking for developers for that sort of work. There are tons of posts on Twitter for this sort of thing. People like to use Twitter because it's a lazy way to get responses. Generally these people are also very responsive. Use other social media as well.

Roam forums and other areas where people can post to for the sorts of work you would like. People who need developers know to go to these places and post requests. You could also get more specific by drilling down to specific software. In other words, if you do Ruby work, then you might look at forums for Ruby based content management systems. Maybe you would rather not work with a CMS, but at least this could get you started. Find something which has a big community around it. Another twist is to find something which has a big community and also has a commercial license, then you know that these customers are willing to pay and they probably need a developer to go with that license. A good keyword to look at for this sort of thing is "pro network." This is niche gold.

Network like crazy with other developers. Getting work seems to be feast or famine. Developers starting out may not find any work, but the developers who have been at this a while have more work than they can handle with new opportunities always knocking on the door. If you can show other developers that you know your stuff, then they may ask you if you can take on their overflow. This is great for them because they can give their overflow a better response than "sorry, I can't help you at all."

You might consider doing something other than client work. Client work can be a black hole which can devour you and all your time. Perhaps you could try building something which can make money through subscriptions or by selling products. An example of selling code would be Wordpress add-ons. If you could build some sort of web service then this would give your team the experience of building, shipping and growing something. That's great experience that a lot of your competition may not have.

If you still want to do client work then you should consider saving up 3 - 6 months of living expenses and going all in. That way you will have the flexibility to jump on more opportunities and open up more time if something goes wrong. Once you get the flow started, you might also find that it doesn't stop and that you could easily book yourself up for months to come.

This was largely off the cuff. If you were to brainstorm then you could keep this list going. Always be tweaking and turning over new stones. This is how you create your own luck.