I would echo the bit about the personal network. I have found it surprising how many opportunities have surfaced from people in my network who I never thought would need a website or know someone who does. Once you start doing work for folks in your network it can snowball into even more opportunities.
I would shy away from offering your services for cheap if you can. It can be a good thing to do when you are just getting started as developer and don't have a portfolio yet. Given that you have been building things for 7-8 years though, I would guess that you have some examples of things you have built that you can share with prospective clients?
If you have the capacity to try out freelancing on top of your day job, I think it is a great way to validate if you have the appetite for it and earn some extra money while doing it.
Have two of these labor of love, don't really care if it takes off types of projects right now.
First is Sonic Postcards - a digital postcard and playlist of my favorite music for the week. Pretty much doing it as an excuse to find new music, learn about the artists, and keep a writing habit going.
Second is Streamster. OSS lib designed to make working with natural resource related APIs easier. Main goal being to provide an easier way to get the data and have it returned in a more consistent format. Allow devs to leverage the data and not spend all their mental bandwidth wrangling with it.
I would shy away from offering your services for cheap if you can. It can be a good thing to do when you are just getting started as developer and don't have a portfolio yet. Given that you have been building things for 7-8 years though, I would guess that you have some examples of things you have built that you can share with prospective clients?
If you have the capacity to try out freelancing on top of your day job, I think it is a great way to validate if you have the appetite for it and earn some extra money while doing it.