I'm over 40 and have been doing contract/freelance work for 15 years. The very simple but unglamorous advice on getting started that you never see is to get a few initial gigs through agencies. You'll give up some of your rate but you don't have to worry about sales or getting paid on time. Then just deliver and be a pro. Before you know it you'll have a network in your area that you can start relying on.

I'm 31. I couldn't find any work so I went out freelancing. I am a UX UI designer and started on Upwork. It's not a good long term solution in terms of projects but I believe it's a great place to start. What worked for me was not to compete on price. I priced myself above most freelancers and it seemed to work. Now more and more of my business is coming from referrals but I still get good projects from Upwork. I turn down about 90% of requests on there. It starts off a bit slow but snowball quickly. I say all of this without knowing your industry but I'm sure the same principles can be applied to any type of work, may just need to look for other avenues of initial leads.

I'm trying on Upwork but I find that it's hard to get the first few jobs. Did you build up a strong portfolio to get the first few jobs?