I wish I knew how to get hired remotely. I'm an experienced programmer, but I happen to also be a security paranoid, so not only I have not bothered building an online persona, I have also removed every trace of myself on the internet. I can prove my experience, but not to an HR guy. I also think I have good written English, and yet I haven't even had a response to any emails I've sent for remote work in other countries (I don't want to work for my country, for several reasons). Any thoughts?
You have your own answer: Someone who's invisible on the Internet, with unproven skills to the first tier of hiring, applying for remote work. No one in their right mind would hire you because you're impossible to vet. Any manager seeing your email would likely think you're an outsourcing firm in Bangalore trying to present as a lone wolf.
You want to get hired for remote dev? Build a strong online profile by working visibly with a prominent project, and network through there to get someone who's worked with you to vouch for you.
Pick a company like reddit, that provides a service using open source software, and submit a patch to a problem they care about. That would get the attention of the programming staff without going through HR.
