I've had good luck with Upwork, moved two of my clients off Upwork. Worked with them for a few years after. One went out of business, one was paying a lot and demanding a lot, eventually I wasn't able to keep up for personal reasons.

I also had a professional website and ran Google Ads (at a time it was still relevant), got many small gigs and one long-time client this way. I should mention I also wrote and sold a small software addon there, mostly as a way to acquire new clients - tried to make the support top-tier and lure clients into giving me other work.

After that, I haven't been actively looking for more work and eventually shut the website down as the software became irrelevant and I had work by word of mouth.