Stuck, don't know how to freelance

I'm a research/academia type of person with the aim of gaining experience/learning by freelancing. But upwork.com pretty much only offers jobs such as

• install wordpress-site for a dollar
• Convert a flash sjw to js, spend your time research some outdated crap and get a dollar
• Learn cakePHP for this one-time job

And doing peoples C++-homework, if you're lucky to land it, yields you 1 dollar.

I could land jobs that require me to learn and use python for example (and finish the work within a week). But the problem is that the one hiring you wants to interview you first and check your knowledge.

Each new job wants you to master another useless ad-hoc lib. The diversity of the jobs are too wide to spend time on. The few ones you're interested in, e.g. an expired job of reverse engineering some x86 software barely pays and are weird (they want you to crack some game).

Market looks like shit and I can see myself walking into a wall easily while stealing time from my studies with no gain, neither financial or eperience.

Am I donig this wrong? I need to find the jobs elsewhere? Adapting to this kind of market is like hanging yourself, isn't it?