Your pay is basically a measure of "this is how hard it is to replace you" with an adjustment for how bad it would be if you quit and your employer doesn't bother to replace you. Your talents, insofar as they are a factor, are only useful to you in figuring out how to do something that is both uncommon and useful.
Don't expect to be well paid because of your skill or talent. There are a lot of talented people out there, raw intelligence is relatively cheap and easy to find. If we can rank humans by talent then there are 80 million people out there in the top 1% of talent. It isn't special. Even top 0.1% is a relatively large pool vs how many people are needed of that calibre.
This is striking, the problem seems to be that most of the jobs that engineers are doing are easily replaceable.
Being good at making money in life is like being good at monopoly. Not everyone has or wants that kind of time, though you will see, if you play the game real hard there is money everywhere.
Are you sure you know how to live a quality life? If you spend whatever you have and don’t bother tracking your waste, it won’t matter how much you’re paid.
Living a lean and frugal lifestyle has always been a mark of achievement among the most fulfilled of humanity. Your stuff and the ease of burning cash are human blight, not a gauge of worth.
That said, you must troll for opportunities, or be so well known they come knocking. Know how to bill. Once others agree to work with you, Send invoices immediately just for talking to them (minimal four hour invoice, if the project is worth a few thousand $, requesting a portion up front is not unusual). Keep invoicing, keep doing the work.
You’ll only have to hustle to get started. People who like to pay for work, like those who can deliver consistently, reliably, and without fuss.