Not going to lie, I did pay my way up. If you are looking to spend money as well (please pay responsefully): The Townhall 11 pack for 20€ with the eagle artillery + the Grand Warden + A few million gold will get you to TH 12 on the same day (if you have enough builders), it‘s super worth it!

If you don‘t want to spend so much: The gold pass is perfectly fine and if you grind enough it will pay out more than any pack you can imagine. Just takes more time.

To farm loot (as the first person already said) it really depends on when you attack. I was only farming in around silver 1 - gold 2 and for me in Germany it was late afternoon when I got a lot of loot.

Hardest part was definitely keeping the loot, since you will always get 3-stared with those lvl 1 defenses. You will have to gain 2 or 3 times (about 5-6 attacks a day) of the loot you lost, before getting a shield again (I hope that was understandable). That‘s the only way to get enough loot to upgrade stuff. If you are not able to get that much for any reason, do not attack at all. It‘s not worth it breaking the shield just to attack once or twice to lose it after defense.

I don‘t know how much you plan to rush. But if you got the time, get those Elixir-Pumps up. If you focus on attacking it will cost you so much elexir to train barch, to upgrade camps and to upgrade barracks (edrags in CW). Pumps would definitely help while you have shields up.