How do I get a first freelance-writing job on the internet?

One place is go to Amazon’s Mechanical Turk and do any writing jobs listed. They don’t pay much but some of the people posting the jobs are looking for reliable writers. I was offered one such job on the basis of several short web articles I wrote on Alaskan salmon, but it turned out to be a lot more of the same for relatively little pay.

But it is a way to break into the field.

I work at a small local bicycling magazine, which doesn’t have a big budget. We welcome anyone who’s passionate about writing and cycling, to submit either an article or and idea on which they want to write about. If we like, we publish.

I would recommend finding a smaller publication in your field of interest, talk to them, and go from there.