You basically just open a channel to their node. Some nodes have limitations, like a min amount needed. Once it's open you have a channel with outbound liquidity only in the beginning. As you spend you gain inbound liquidity as well. There's also websites where you can organize to make circles so you get for example 2 channels, one in and one out from another person. 

 And services you can pay for inbound liquidity. Basically you pay for them to open a channel to you. 

 Thanks! Can you link one of those websites you mentioned? I've heard of those circles of fire that people would make way back, and that would be interesting to try out. 

 For example https://lightningnetwork.plus/

Or you find 2 (or more) plebs on Nostr to join a circle 

 There’s two options. First, and recommended, it to reach out to the node that you want to open with and see if they are interested in a channel. If you can establish some type of relationship/connection, your channel is more likely to stay open. You will also be able to communicate with them if it goes down for some reason. 

The other way is to just open a channel randomly. If they have their node setup to accept channels,it will open as long as you meet the size limits. But you have no real idea they will randomly close the channel on you. Option one doesn’t guarantee that they won do that as well. But I’ve found that having some idea of who your channel partner is, works best. 

One more thing, I like to look at channels of the node to see if we have a bunch of the same connections. I feel it’s best to not be connected to the same nodes if possible. Sounds like your looking to open a channel, I’d be glad to share node info with you and accept a channel if it looked like a good fit for us both. 

 Thanks for the info. I'm still figuring out how I want to set up the node. But when I have it up, I'll hit you up to see if we can open a channel 👍 

 Sounds good. I’m no expert but been running a node for a while now.  Feel free to hit me up if you have questions. I’ve run both @umbrel an @Start9  Both have their quirks, but I settled on Start9.