I did something like this in the mid-1990s (looking for Unix sysadmin work - or something similar) and then again about four years ago (programming work). Both

I did something like this in the mid-1990s (looking for Unix sysadmin work - or something similar) and then again about four years ago (programming work). Both times it worked, although I had to cast a wide net and wait a little bit. Both were very, very small underfunded companies. I didn't say I'd work for free, but said I was working for the experience and job recommendation more than the money. Honestly for the second one it was more about the recommendation, of having something to put on my resume other than my own S-corp and what have you. I could get most of the small scale experience myself (although they pushed me into NoSQL, GCP/EC2 and other things I wouldn't have ventured into - and turning mockups into code too). I was very up front with them too - I promised them I would do cheap work for them for a month and would then be open to offers, and if someone wanted to hire me for six figures I would probably take it. Oddly enough at both companies (1996 and the more recent one) I spent about 18 months working for the company before being hired by a company actually willing to pay. In the recent situation, I also was fixated on a niche which made things a little more difficult for me initially, although now I am better off it took a little longer to get going in terms of getting paid. Small tech companies are generally looking for people who known HTML, CSS, Javascript and web frameworks like React. If you look like, without needing that much help, you can do tickets/stories to implement features on a web site that uses React, and can pass the standard interview gauntlet for that type of job, I think you will find a job fairly quickly.