I am in the same boat, albeit a completely different field, still it might help. Have you considered becoming a news and information resource for nonprofits, trade associations, and small businesses? I am a lobbyist and grassroots advocacy manager. I work from home, have no network, and limited ability to do so. I stumbled on to some schools that were interested in public policy, and laws. I rang one of them up and offered to monitor the law and legislation for them, and let them know when things came up that they might find interesting. Very low price, about a grand a month. That one school told someone else, and now I've got four schools. Just enough to pay the bills and eek by. I focused on keeping the price way down to entice people, make it up in volume.