freelance rates have way more to do with the economy than with merit/skill. You want to be early to a major platform shift (mine was Reactjs) but not too early - your offering needs to be both unique and in high demand. And then the big money gets made when this hype wave aligns with an economic boom such as 2018-2023 where companies everywhere are flush with cash, trying to pull projects forward, bidding up rates without looking too closely. Which is not exactly the case right now. Right now, you have to earn it. The first Solana cycle was another example where early freelance rates were out of control. Cloud cost optimization was another good niche (if you’re reducing spend by millions per year it’s easy to charge a good chunk of that). “Data engineering” before that. “devrel” in the startup scene during covid when everyone was stuck at home.

the other thing is - big tech pays better than that historically, has that changed? economy is bad everywhere, i’d be surprised if freelancing was the better gig