Had a guy who always wanted me to do things outside of scope, and then would play dumb. He would send passive aggressive emails asking for things that they knew were not included in my services.
I tolerated them for a little while, and then when they came back to me for additional work I told them I changed my pricing and jacked the price way up. I secretly call it the asshole tax. He got all indignant and I never heard from him again.
If you've got steady income you might be better off just saving the money yourself. Not a lot of commercial lenders are going to get excited about a $9,000 loan.
Write lots of original high quality content, and post consistently.
There are some tricks that I've learned along the way that speed up the process. Any article you want to write, you can start by doing a voice memo on your phone and then running it through software that will convert it to text. I find it easier than using voice recognition on my phone because sometimes I'll talk for 10 minutes straight.
I copied my competitors SEO strategy. Wherever I saw them post an article, I posted an article. I used some online tools to see what keywords they were using and began pumping out content using the same keywords until they overtook them.
I mark as spam without opening. Otherwise it's triggers the next email in the sequence where the "manager" sends a follow-up. I want their email tracker to mark it as unopened and classified as spam so they take me off their list.
The ascent of robo calls and the do not call list has pretty much ended cold calling. You'd need an opt-in list.
This will not make you rich. You'd have to recruit thousands of people to set up websites with YOUR referral code. And even then, they could change the referral program terms and you'd be out of luck.
There are few shortcuts to success, my friend.
Stay at your soul sucking job until you know the new business can support you. That's what I did. After about 2 years of doing both, I finally quit and did my side gig. That was 14 years ago.