Freelance IT/web services? Get a haircut, dress nice. You can thrift a decent shirt and slacks - or charities will often be able to help provide these for free.

Freelance IT/web services? Get a haircut, dress nice. You can thrift a decent shirt and slacks - or charities will often be able to help provide these for free. Start telling local business owners you can help with their IT and website needs, then wait for the phone to ring. It will be slow at first, but once you get momentum you'll hopefully be turning work away! Set a goal of talking to 5 potential clients a week, and be sure to ask for paid work. Once you do a good job for someone, ask if you can use them as a reference - and if they know 2-3 other people who could use your services. Show up on time, respond to calls/messages and you're already a cut above most others. Don't undercharge for your services, and raise your prices regularly. Try and find ways to have clients pay you on a retainer basis so you have consistent cashflow (managed hosting, regular maintenance, on-call retainers etc). Remote work didn't work for me (too much competition from people in cheaper countries - and my best clients were people who did not have the tech skills to even use those sites), building in-person local relationships did (including at meetups/conferences with people I then worked for remotely). You won't get rich this way, but you should be able to find enough business owners who need reliable, friendly help with something - data entry, setting up Google Suite or VOIP phone systems, basic websites, CRUD web apps, databases, automation, spyware removal, etc. Plus you end up with a portfolio that can help you get a full-time tech job - "consulting" counts as industry experience, and I found employers liked that I could handle a project end-to-end, understanding the business needs involved. This was my path, including the near-homelessness. I started making banner ads for $10/hr. My first $100 day was a real milestone. I'm now an Engineering Manager at a large company (~10 years later). Best of luck to you. Hang in there, hustle hard.