100devs - Freelance Engineering Community

For the freelance engineers out there, I want feedback:

A little context:

I've been freelancing for two years. Started off charging $30 an hour and was very limited in what I could build. Two years and about a dozen projects later, I no longer charge hourly but my average hourly is probably somewhere in the $100-$200 range. I have more work than I can take on. I focus on retaining clients I like and trust. I am on track to make more than 150k this year working typically 8 hours a day, 6 days a week.

There are many things I enjoy about being independent:

• Autonomy - choosing what projects to say yes and no to. My default has shifted in the last year from 'yes' to 'no'
• Pseudo-Scalability - code from previous projects can be pieced together to build projects in hours that would have taken weeks.
• Variety - Every project is different and every client is different
• Business - I'm not just programming. There are client meetings, negotiation, sales, marketing, etc.
• Freedom - basically work wherever, whenever

Yet, there are things I don't love:

• It's lonely. Most of my work days are spent by myself in coffee shops.
• My resources are completely online, not human. This has taught me to 'figure things out myself' but I miss the technical discussions I used to have with my colleagues at Microsoft. I could walk across the floor to ask them a question.
• Having to say No to projects. I oftentimes turn down projects because 1) it requires skills that I don't have and it wouldn't be profitable to take the time to learn or 2) it's too big a project for one person.

IDEA:

What if there was a community of a small number (maybe 100) of talented freelance engineers. There would be a screening process to get in requiring passing technical interviews, demoing past projects, and providing proof of past financial earnings. There would also be a membership fee. The members would be serious.

The community would be a couple of things:

1. A resource for help in designing, building, testing projects
2. A place to join forces with other engineers. Maybe I find a project that would require 4 developers. I could post it to the community and team up with other members. We could all negotiate a split. This would allow members who aren't completely booked to find new jobs, while allowing other members to do jobs they couldn't have done alone.
3. A social space - It could be a place to hang out with other smart people who are trying to live a similar lifestyle.

What do you all think?