The first part is actually the more daunting one. How do I find work in the first place? I'm only a student with virtually no connection in the industry.
In my case, I wrote a JavaScript library that was just good enough to be useful, and well-documented, but not incredibly full-featured. People need changes and additions from time to time.
Since I have a full time job, I turn down a lot of gigs (like "integrate your library into our code," rather than working on the library itself), but I think the strategy in general is good if you chase down all the leads.
If this looks appealing to you, I'd be open to forwarding leads to others if you can make me confident that you can do the job. Send me an email if so.
There's lots of routes in before you get experience, and also helps build your portfolio and references.
Make friends with some local charities - do a little work or make their new website (or whatever you do) for free, or cost. Ask them to publicise it on their site in return.
Similar for local small businesses who might buy your services. Talk to some, offer free or cost price in return for a little exposure.
Use spare time to build your portfolio, just because. Program a few small utilities or design a site for the dog and put them all on your portfolio site as you start to build it.
The article seemed to lean to designers, but I conducted a lot of interviews that I didn't get through referrals from colleagues for development. I can't speak for the world at large, but when I had roles that could be filled by low/no professional experience developers types as employees or freelance, there were a couple of things that would stand out:
1) Do something. Make something. A developer can benefit from a portfolio of projects where a prospective hiring manager can see what you are capable of doing. Don't worry about it being perfect, but do try to show that you care about your craft and have good reasons for what you did when asked. This I imagine is required, but tougher for designer types as there are usually more of them trying to get in the door. If you can conceive of or participate in a project that people would be interested in on it's own merits, all the better.
2) Don't incorporate elements from third parties (such as copying and pasting code from Stack Overflow, for example) without having the legal right to do so and without clearly designating the incorporated elements as being what they are. From a developer perspective, I saw more copy and paste code being represented to me as original code in code samples than I would have thought; often times without any original work whatsoever... and yes I checked to see if I could find the code published somewhere. In those cases, proposals/resumes, etc. all were round-filed due to the honesty issues raised. If a project/sample included appropriate/properly documented third party bits along with original work... no problem.
3) Depending on what you do, try to get some specialized domain knowledge in a marketable subject and write about or demonstrate that knowledge in some way. I specialize in boring old ERP type systems, for example. Because I know the accounting rules, the logistics, and operations of inventory centric companies, I have extra knowledge that I can sell compared to someone that has technical skill alone.
The whole point is to show that you are self-motivated, are capable, and have good judgment. True, it's really hard to beat experience and track-record, but you can compete on price until you have reference-able clients under your belt. Also, beat on every door that looks like it might be a potential customer: outside of having contacts on the inside, good salesmanship is the only way to let people know you're there and can make the difference compared to your peers that aren't selling themselves as aggressively.
(for the record, I do nothing but freelance work these days).
Feel free to drop me a line if you have questions! (email in HN profile).