I have to recommend http://jobs.perl.org. Anyone posting jobs there has someone involved in the hiring process who understands the Perl community.

That I know not to be true. I've pointed recruiters to jobs.perl.org (and seen their offerings appear there) who had no knowledge what so ever about any "Perl community" except for the fact the only person they knew with significant Perl knowledge was me. I know of others who succesfully point recruiters to jobs.perl.org. Being able to figure out a webform to post a job opening doesn't make one understand the Perl community.

Work for yourself. There is no question that you're willing to overlook your own lack of a degree. When people hire consultants they generally ask different questions than when they hire employees. You might just find that your lack of a degree is less of a barrier there.

Maybe. Maybe not. I don't know how the situation is in the USA, but I've worked for a consulting company in .nl for a couple of years. And unless you have been hired by a company before, almost every application for a consulting gig starts with sending a resume, which is used as a first filter for the company potentially hiring you. Now the difference is that for many consulting gigs, you have to do a very specific thing - so they might weight experience more than degree. But that's a chicken-and-egg problem, to be able to get (more) experience, one must have experience.

Abigail