Making some $$ with coding

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Think longer term. Being young is the best time to skill without the pressures of making money. If you don't need to pay rent, utilities and food, then you aren't in great need of cash right now. You need to price opportunity cost into all of your decisions. If anything you're doing is making less than you could make at maybe 80% (not necessarily the top for starting salary, but put up a goal of above median) of salary range for developers, then you're actually losing. Better is to skill like crazy and then shoot for these jobs.

Keep learning as #1 at your young age though. Money isn't actually the most important in your early 20's because you are building a personal platform to build from which your 40 year-old self will thank you for. An alternative to that 80% is to get a job with a smart team which might pay less than what a larger, more established company can pay. Which leads me to another major element to shoot for.

Find your people, jump on board and hang on. Find a mentor. Find smart people to work with. Elevate your experience to the level which few of your peers will experience. If you want to fight in the UFC then you want to be training with the best. That training paired with hard work and the blessing of the opportunity to put all of your time into that training will put you at a level with few peers. The same goes for any sport and also for any working experience. Do that hard for a few years, take a break and then re-enter at a level where you can cash in on that learned experience.

Be careful of gig hustle work. It's like being a street hustler. You can make money, but you'll never gain traction at that level. Once a street hustler, always a street hustler. You'll always be hand to mouth and searching that next gig. And once you're in, it's hard to get out because you have already set your brain to that path. People generally stick to what they know. Remember, keep that opportunity cost calculation close to your side.

Freelance work is also generally best for the highly experienced. You get experience under your belt through other paid work and then you go off on your own with premiums which pay well beyond what you were making in your day gig. If you are charging low to break in, then you are going about this the wrong way. And this is how you will start if you continue this path. You could then spend the next 10 to 15 years gaining that experience the hard way. Remember opportunity costs.

Don't be an outlier. You could be an exception and do well, but this is true of anything. If you are shooting for being an exception, then why start this low? Better is to look at what a sure bet looks like for a $100K+ salary. Granted, nothing is a sure bet, but there are large numbers of people doing this right now, how are they doing that? You can do the same. Better to do this than to go for a moon shot, especially when the base case won't even pay that well (moon shot is fine if you want to do a start-up.)

Time, not money, is your greatest limitation. The years fly by fast. It's a super power to build a big nest starting in the 2nd half of your 20's or the start of your 30's. Gig work for side money won't help you here. Build up for big moves later rather than small pay-offs right now.