I'm going to give you my best advice, because I've been where you are now and got out of it and I feel for you because there is nothing more soul sucking than lacking cash to move your ambitions forward.
I put everything into bootstrapping a startup that had decent traction ( ~ 1 million visits in a month). The problem was that advertising revenue was very low per user. merch was selling, but revenue per sale was low.
At the end I sold it for a small amount and was at the same place I was at the start, but with greater knowledge and experience.
I know you feel really low right now, but you can beat this.
You could definitely be valuable for a startup. I find though that its faster to find clients to consult for and get paid by them than it is to be hired.
Just this month I posted to the monthly Freelancer thread here on HN. Someone from across the country called me, I modified my contract and they signed it and the next day paid me via pay pal. The cash was in my bank three days from first contact. In the first three billable hours I understood their system, set up test servers and had the basic functionality they needed done. I automated a task that was key to their core business thus saving a lot of their employees time.
So if you need money fast I recommend consulting.
MOST IMPORTANT
Forget that you are broke. It is irrelevant to your clients. It is not their problem. You are being hired to help them. Communicating that you are
broke will lower their confidence in you, lower the amount they will pay you and cause general animosity. You must be professional at all times.
You must have a solid but simple contract and a professional accounting system. Freshbooks is amazing in this regard.
There is a certain kind of client that you are perfect for. You need to find companies with revenue that need technical help for their core business. If you can solve these problems for them quickly, communicate well and be responsive and professional you will find plenty of work.
You are low on one kind of resource (cash), but have a wealth of very valuable knowledge and skills. Do not forget that you are a wizard of the modern era, capable of creating incredible wonders that are impenetrably complex and confusing for the uninitiated.
Here are my actions steps for you:
1) Set up Freshbooks accounting for online invoicing and online payment
2) Draft a simple contract. Only bill for materials and time. I have clients pre-pay for anywhere from 5 hours to one weeks worth of time. This way the risk is low for both of you and you can avoid lengthy negotiation. They pay a high rate for the flexibility and no long term commitment. You are like an on-demand EC2 instance and thus are worth the highest rate per hour.
3) Work efficiently and be organized with records. Shell aliases, master an editor like vim, set up git repos for skeleton projects in your stack of choice, use git smartly, reuse existing code etc... Your clients will be paying you a high hourly rate and you need to show results for them.
Treat every pre-paid block of time as a job interview. You must impress them every time. Avoid unnecessary overhead like complex time estimation. Work for at least somewhat tech savvy clients. Avoid small businesses that are cash strapped. Don't charge flat rates for projects.
Even if it takes you a few extra hours to get something working for them in the first block of time do it and don't ask for more money until you show them something working.
It only takes one good client to change your outlook 100%. Follow these steps and you will succeed and life will get easier. I went from being desperate to having more work than I have time for and needing to turn people down.
Good luck and godspeed.