IT career advice?

www.coursera.org/

"Something I can do online, next to work, free of charge"

Porn.

If your work is not challenging/rewarding enough start a one-man company, or at least take jobs you can do while on your regular job.
Web designing, computer diagnosing/repair, helpdesk etc.etc. do one and a half jobs while getting paid for two, that's the key to a happy non-challenging IT job.

Oh.... and don't get caught! ;)

http://alison.com/

consider networking as a field for you to specialize in.
Network engineers are always needed. Start with a CCNA and work your way up!
There's also a good introductory computer networking course on coursera - it's a good course to get a basic understanding.

My advise: learn powershell and bash, thats the future.

i got several idea for you :

1. learn about website seo and how to get money from your own web/blog ( there's several forum that good at this, try blackhatworld )
2. check out freelancer.com and check the category, and decide which category you want to learn ( and also how much you can get ), for easy way check out wordpress category or another cms
3. if you want to be more specialize, learn about cloud computing ( vmware, hyper-v or rhel virtualization ), or if you prefer networking, try to get at least ccna or ccnp certificate , or if you like security try to get CEH certificate ( or learn by yourself with backtrack linux )

If you're into software development, you might want to contribute to some open source project, or publish your own project. Also build a good score on stackoverflow.com (a 5 digit score usually means you know your stuff.)

I don't have a degree, and these two things landed me a Google interview (I passed the remote interviews, and went for on-site ones, which I didn't pass.) Note that I got contacted by them; I didn't even apply. Then I got contacted by a German business for doing development remotely. Which is what I do now.

So from my experience, have an online presence that shows your work (meaning mainly github and stackoverflow), because without a degree, that is the only way for people to tell whether you're worth further consideration or not. (Though it's a good idea for people with a degree too, since it shows they're actually enjoying what they're doing, rather than viewing it as a chore that they're forced to do in order to put some food on the table.)

Thanks for your suggestions. I've never tried software development, but right now I'm open to everything. Where should I start to get to the point I can actually contribute?

I would like to thank all of you for your valuable advice, it's much appreciated.

I did what you're doing when I left school 13 years ago. For 2 years it went well, then every other bastard started doing the same and charged £5 ($7.50) per hour when I was charging £20 (included travel.)
Now, in my hometown, there are people who do technical support for free and then charge extra for spare parts - though less than high street store prices, making people think they're a bargain. Problem is - these people didnt need replacement arts in the first place and it would have been cheaper to pay someone per hour.

Do something else. Anything else. Web design doesn't make a lot of money, but gives you a wide range of jobs if you can prove your abilities.