Your situation is hard, but it’s possible to improve it. IMO, the first thing you need to remove is the low-paying job, which doesn’t give you any relevant experience. Uber, delivery, McDonald’s, telecom companies, and so on are really bad deals — if you don’t really want to make a career there. You spend your time but receive almost nothing.
Look, you can do good videos, right? If you’re really been doing that for 9 years, you are probably highly skilled in this. That means you can do freelance easily. IDK that much about the video edit sphere, but I think that $17/hour is around the lowest possible rate for this job on Upwork(ofc you can find $3/h guys from other continents, but I don’t talk about this).
But just imagine, even if you find a freelance video editing project for $17/h, you will receive much more experience than in Uber. You will be involved in many different projects that you will never make yourself otherwise, will be pushed to learn new things for your freelance projects, and will have a bunch of good contacts (and a lot of not that good, but this is the price).
Again, $17 on freelance video editing> $17 on McDonald’s. And I think the average rate for this is around 30-35 USD, so after gaining some exp you will make more than now.
But if you decide to do freelance, take it seriously. For the first orders you will need to send a lot of proposals, learn how to sell, make your portfolio and learn a lot. The learning will be not about the videos/animations/your professional stuff, but how to sell, how to communicate with clients, how to present your work and yourself (not so bad skills, better than knowing how to make Big Macs probably).
Starting on Upwork is hard. You will be sending around 30-50 proposals, buying connects and mostly receiving nothing, your proposals will not even be viewed. But that’s definitely possible.
And then you’ll have a steady income and you’ll be inside the hustle, making your own videos in parallel.
What I’d definitely recommend is to find a proper community. For freelancers, for YouTubers, for entrepreneurs, not matter what you want. When you see guys who work for $60/hour on Upwork, 20k/month on their projects, you start believing that it’s real. Then you repeat their way, learning along it, working a lot, dropping your current s***ty jobs and receiving what you want. That’s hard but doable. Good luck!
That’s strange… I’m a freelance front-end dev myself, working on Upwork, and I think I’m pretty good (not an ad). So they exist! =)
From the freelancer’s perspective, Upwork is one of the best places to find a project. The other places like Guru, Freelancer com and so on are much worse, IMO.
The badges like top rates are not quality signs actually. Almost everyone can earn it, the conditions are pretty easy.
Maybe, you are just not paying enough? What’s your proposed/acceptable rate? I am not considering anything lower than $55/hour, just completely filtered it out. And not doing fixed-price projects at all (anymore, had a terrible experience).
The other thing, I think you need to talk with the freelancer before the contract. Give a good, technical-oriented job description and look and his/her responses and questions closely. Not general ones like “I can do this, did this 100500 times”, but related to the point. Add good questions to the job post, but not that much, 2 or 3 as max. Otherwise, devs just skip it.
Start small, with a little, clear tasks and look at their results.
In short, treat the hiring process as seriously as good freelancers do. Make a clear, detailed job post. Talk with freelancers before the work, possibly even via call. Don’t look at the country and badges that much. Their proposals, communication, and previous related projects are much more important. Good luck!