Ask HN: Freelance Opportunities

I’ve been doing freelance for the past five years, and for better or worse relied on a small set of clients. Larger projects are slowly coming to the end and I have found myself financially reliant on this income that is barely coming in.

I’ve looked at upwork and the other freelance sites but since I work full time as well, I cannot compete at a sustainable level with developers outside North America since where I am the cost of living is pretty high. I’ve lowered my rates and reached out to a few old clients and connections and am hopeful to get a lead on a new project, but I’m wondering if there are any good sites out there to meet potential new clients?

I’m doing some local networking as well in hopes that I can find some work and I have a few potential clients I’m currently talking to but they haven’t converted to paid clients.

I’ve also considered making SaaS, I have years of experience writing high volume advertising and analytics software in Go and Java so I feel like maybe there is potential to do something there but I feel like the ideas I have are solutions looking for a problem that hasn’t been solved.

I’m wondering if there are others that have been in this position and if you have any ideas on where to find part time work where I can work on my own time at night, or any words of encouragement :)

Appreciate any feedback received.