How successful is your writing and how did you get where you are?

About me- won a writing contest in sophomore year of college and got published in a journal. Loved it and decided to try to blog on Wikipedia since I didn’t know where else to go. Tried to send columns as a freelancer to news sites and never got it. Was this pace or slower until first year of law school (3 years later.) Got a short law article published in an academic U.S. law journal. Got a few more published the two years following that and got to the point where I secured maybe somewhere between 1-4 freelance post pickups on smaller to medium sized websites. Blogged on medium and a few super small news websites, probably none with any substantial readers and a few thousand followers on insta. In these years, I have been super successful in the academic research field. I feel that the more I write the more prone I become to getting offers. However, have applied to numerous writer positions that actually pay (as in, like 300 total in 4 years,) and never got one offer. I also have emailed maybe dozens or big name news sites to offer articles and never got any offer, and mostly, was totally ignored. So for all of you who regularly write or work for big name news sites, how did you get there