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What you're asking for is an easy way out. There isn't one.
If you've got over a year of financial runway, I'd say you could feel pretty happy about that. I'm sure you'll figure out something in that time.
I'm not saying it's a sure path to getting income, but at the worst case, you'll be left with something to show and some programming experience too.
Money is a symptom.
Well, what kind of experience do you have?
You can filter out SaaS products, and explore other business models and what kind of revenue to expect by browsing the products and interviews.
I hope this helps.
These can lead to opportunities to maintain older software, or work on very specific projects. I did well updating and maintaining ancient Microsoft Access databases for small and medium size businesses who relied on them for day to day operations.
I'm currently utilizing several contractors who specialize in single products, and know them like the back of their hand (Lucine/ElasticSearch for actual full text search, not just elk stack)
There are TONS of "Full Stack" developers out there, so trying to work in that environment until you have a solid client base is, like you said, a race to the bottom.
On the local SMB side, I never told clients I was a Software Developer. I was a problem solver who could use technology when appropriate. Ask some local companies or SMB employees what the most painful part of their day happens to be. Maybe its something you can solve with some out of the box open source, a repurposed desktop as an SMB Server, or a little software development project. These things turn into recurring revenue as you save the companies money and time.
Well, what kind of experience do you have?
I would apply to something like Toptal. When we were first built our team for my startup, we used Toptal contractors for quite a while. They were solid, and to my understanding, made good money. Toptal takes a significant cut of course. The bar is you have to pass a qualification test, which given your 3.5 years of experience, should be enough to get up and running.
It's a 5 step test, you might retake one or two steps depending how much they like you and how you failed. I had a problem with my tooling doing a live coding test, could take it again within a month. Others have been told to be sure to apply again in a year. Some haven't been invited back. Speaking English at a pretty good level (not accent free per sé but you should be able to get a complex technical point across) is required.
Another problem is that most people don't use basic algorithms too much in their daily jobs, for example because collections are too small to feel the difference or because you kind of "feel" what is the optimal way to do things but you can't just whip out an optimal pathfinding algorithm under pressure. This requires some training.