Ding ding ding! Without being facetious, this is the most core-aspect of any success. What is actually required is a training wheels level program or book outlining how and where to get the clients. Yes, some of us may have gotten lucky, or had a break that flew into our lap - this is not the rule. And in fact, anything else other than the rule is noise. Getting paying clients should be a key goal of any business. Selling your personal anecdotal experience does not help unless it is distilled into a repeatable formula.

I would like to point out that I've been at this game for a short while with mixed results. What has worked in my favor, well in favor of getting closer to winning a bid or getting paid: clean business presence, professional copy, actually rephrasing all requirements back to the client and how I'm going to solve his problem, not lowering my prices at all - I keep my bids in the upper 25% of what I perceive the ceiling to be, be attentive to every minutiae that seems core-like to the project, communicate without long delay regardless of level of inquiry - no question is too trivial.

Above is a result of unintentional lack of effective execution and then actually committing to being a better manager rather than an engineer. I didn't understand that while I was confident in my abilities to get the job done, I still didn't get that job because I didn't prove it to the client and sold myself.

Avenues that I used on and off: cheap advertisement on radio, local newspaper, business directory, offered to sponsor two contests, scavenged elance, offered promo work for free just like what the other fellow is doing on HN. Regardless, it is hard and not steady. I can tell that specialization and asking for a monthly retainer to offer pre-allocated hours to specific clients is probably the key to crossing that income stability threshold.