If you keep to working a schedule of so many hours per day and use that time wisely you can easily make the money you need. As someone said above, you can try to take advantage of some of the higher promotion days can work for you. I hate to spam, but check out
industry incentives and it will show you who has increased payouts.
As for freesites, I have noticed a decline in the number of sign-ups you get from submitting to them. Things are not nearly as profitable as they were a few years ago, but I still find it worth the time if you do it every day as over time the number of sites you have on the lists keeps getting bigger and you will get sales from things you submitted months prior sometimes.
I am sure you can also pick up a bit of work doing text or other tasks for webmasters/sponsors if you keep your eyes open on the boards and I believe there are a couple of webmaster job sites out there that you can use to find work.