I'm self employed myself and while I feel your pain, the only advice that I can give is evolve and adapt.

With how cheap and easy it is go gain an internet connection these days, newspapers are becoming obsolete so if you are relying on newspaper ads as your primary means of advertisement, consider getting a full fledged website complete with a professional looking description of the services that you offer and pricing and what not and investing into SEO to boost your web page's ranking on Google. Getting a decent web page can be cheap by utilizing a service such as Squarespace which can get you a professional web site for as low as $30 a month and SEO services can be obtained for no more than a few hundred dollars if you know where to look.

Also, consider utilizing web sites like Craigslist to promote your work and getting ads up on some of the biggest sites such as Ebay, Amazon.com, Facebook, ect which are cheaper than you may think.

Finally, become innovative. Don't limit your business just to services. Consider selling products related to the services that you offer. If you get the web site via the method that I suggested above, you could easily add products to sell as well to further boost your income and there are cheap ways to get products to sell without a lot of hassle. Consider getting into dropshipping (feel free to Google it if you are unsure what dropshipping is)

If you need any help or suggestions, feel free to hit me up anytime