How do you find clients when you have no network and can only do remote?

I have no network, no ability to relocate, can’t get a full time job right now, and urgently need to make some bucks real quick. But several articles and comments here suggested that upwork.com and similar freelance websites do some really shady things and that it’s not good to use them for any kind of work, even temporary… I can’t for the life of me figure out how to get a job using these skills but without a network.