I was going to write a lot of what patio11 already did - it's much the same advice I give to people in similar situations - I'll try to add a bit more.

It's 0 to do with your lack of degree. I have a degree in philosophy from 20 years ago - that plays 0 role in determining projects. Word of mouth and referrals are a primary key to projects coming in. How do you get those?

Networking events help some, but it's a slower process and more of a 'long term' effort to be keeping up. Finding events focused on a particular industry you want to serve (education, finance, writers, construction, food service, etc) will give you a bigger bang for your time investment. You may not have a portfolio specifically focused on 'industry x', but it doesn't matter - showing up at some of their events - and talking to people - will connect you with some players.

Asking people for referrals will generally help too, although doing this with clients from outsourcing sites won't - they've already demonstrated how they want to search for labor. If they like you, they won't want to loan their 'secret weapon' out to friends/colleagues - if they don't, they would't want to ruin their reputation by referring you to someone else. This is somewhat perverse, but it's logic I've heard from more than a few people who've found 'good' developers via sites like odesk. This only applies to people who are continually using your services on a regular basis though.

Following up on patio11 - run your own functions, and/or start your own meetup/networking group. Being the person who runs a regional meetup group will make you the gatekeeper for people who want to contact your group members, generally when they have job/project offers. This won't necessarily be a flood of business on day - again, this a bit more of a long-term strategy - but it can have some moderately quick pay off in some areas.

But... you will need those social skills - I've no idea if yours are good or bad, but just by doing some of these things and putting yourself out there, you'll be demonstrating at least a willingness to learn or improve those skills.

Find local/regional development shops - marketing agencies doing web work, for example - and ask if they have any overflow work. This isn't necessarily going to get you $100/hour work off the bat, but will connect you with more people in your area. That said, for newer projects, they may just price you in to their proposals, and as it's not the agency's money, they won't care too much what your price is - it's just one component of the project.

Also, re: AWS, Node, CoffeeScript - etc - the types of projects you're going to find on outsourcing sites aren't typically going to be relying on those. Business owners care far more about just getting something done than what tech it's using, but those that want specific tech by name probably aren't clamoring for coffeescript or typescript at this point - they'll be asking for drupal or wordpress or magenta by name.

I'm at mgkimsal@gmail.com and would be interested in helping out more if I can - feel free to email me and we can discuss things in private more directly if you'd like.

I'd also throw out that I think you might need to consider travel - no idea if you do that or not, but I've had some projects I couldn't give to people because they weren't available to come on site a few times during the project (as in, drive 5-6 hours and stay overnight).

FWIW, I don't think you're alone - I think there's a number of people in your situation.