In my case, freelance always was through a friend-of-a-friend. And those freelance jobs were nothing major. For example, looking at your example project, thing

In my case, freelance always was through a friend-of-a-friend. And those freelance jobs were nothing major. For example, looking at your example project, thing that I did as a work for hire seemed to have been simpler. There was an existing android app showing on 3 screens weather in Dubai or Abudabi (I don't really remember anymore) and I were to write the IOS port. The reason why the guy chose me, even though I neither had an actual job, nor delivered a project was that he knew me personally for a really long time :-) So, if I were in your shoes, I would literally be emailing classmates I liked working on projects during school and asking them for work, because that is what I did and it worked out well for me :-)