Sites like Freelancer aren't "good" sites. You're competing with people in third world countries who are willing to write the equivalent of Microsoft Office for $100. $10 a week is fantastic income for them.
Since you can do web work, look on
Digital Point There's a section for offering yourself up for slaughter. (Trust me - freelancing is often close to being a human sacrifice. "You want $100 for that? It'll only take a few minutes.") Look on other webmaster sites. If you're comfortable and good with C++, look into Objective C, and write - pardon the profanity - iPhone apps. Look here - we have a section where people ask for apps, or suggest app possibilities.
You're going to have to learn a lot of different fields. I've learned about fish larvae, rice grains, coffee grinding, bookkeeping, selsyns, optometry ... If you don't know the subject you're writing code for, you can't write decent code for it. And always keep in mind - your training for a new piece of software should never be much more than "try it". Write the code to do it thew way they do it now, whether it's on a computer or with pencil and paper. If, when they check this box, they have to fill out that form, if the box in the program gets checked, pop up the form. The computer "learns" to do it their way, they shouldn't have to learn to do it the computer's way. Any program written like that is bad programming. Write good programs, and they're your best advertising. The nicest words I heard from clients were "that's how we've always done it", when they tried the new program for the first time. And I knew I had a permanent client.
Be prepared to be a tough boss if you want to earn your living freelancing. No one is keeping you from skipping a day and enjoying life. That leads to working 3 days a week. Then once in a while. Then ...
Don't go too far in the other direction either. For a few years, I worked 16 hours a day, 7 days a week. I put a lot of money into annuities, but burned out after a few years, and had to stop, smell the roses and re-evaluate what I was doing. (It did give me a comfortable retirement, though.)
