Adventures with clients

I've never done freelance work before, but it's something I've been wanting to venture into. I need some way to earn extra money, but I like the idea of working with other people's ideas instead of my own all the time. So I gave it a shot and while both of my first two clients showed interest at first, both projects just fell flat on their faces.
One was to animate some guy's prank phone calls, but he ended up just kind of saying "Nah, nevermind, not right now. Maybe another time." Hopefully there will be another time with him.
But the other one was going to be a cartoon (or possibly even more than just one) for the Streamy Awards. I just tossed the idea out to them on their Tumblr saying "Hey, I saw you guys had Blah Girls introduce a category last year, would you like another cartoon like that for this year's show?" and I was immediately contacted by a very nice who was pretty enthusiastic and he said it was a good idea and a possibility. So after a few exchanges with him, he was going to put me in contact with two of his fellow producers since they were more suited to the situation and he CC'd our conversation to them. I waited a couple days or so and never heard from either of them and I was worried that maybe I was supposed to be the one to contact them, so I did, and I got an email back from one of the guys saying we should toss around some ideas. So I emailed them back with some brainstorming and waited excitedly. For a week. I didn't want to pester them, but I sent them another email asking if they were still interested. The same guy emailed me back and asked when I would be available to call him, and I immediately answered back. I haven't heard from anyone since. I know the Streamys are looming and they've got a lot more important stuff to do, but obviously the one guy isn't really bothered by the lack of contact and the other never even got in touch with me at all. So I'm going to go out on a limb and say that one's over with since the awards show is in less than a month and I probably wouldn't be able to even finish a cartoon by the time they actually gave me directions.
It didn't even get to the point where the subject of money was brought up in either of these deals. If it had, maybe they would have dropped me sooner and I wouldn't have had to wait around for a few weeks, excited and anxiously waiting for instructions. I didn't work on anything else at all in this time period because I knew if I started something, I would have to go to this and then I wouldn't want to go back to my previous idea. Or maybe I still wouldn't have worked at all these few weeks. But still. If anyone's going to waste my time, it's gonna be me. Don't think I'm soured on trying to find clients for freelance/commission work; I'll still be trying for that. But I just needed to vent.