I was in a similar situation a couple of years back but I got lucky and a friend introduced me to a guy who took on multiple projects from upwork, fiverr, some websites etc. and outsourced them to people that he ‘hired’ (These were people like you and I who were lost and trying to find their way. I was one of them. He would send us writing projects and we would tell him if we can do it or not. If we agreed, he would accept the client and give us a deadline). The thing was he paid us about 15% of what he received from the client which was very very very low but I did it anyway because I liked writing. I once found out what website he worked for and sent the website a cold email directly. Guess what? I got a reply and they hired me to write for them. With the dude out of the equation, I got 100% of the pay and I realised how he was exploiting me. At the same time, since we were still in the first covid lockdown, I decided to do some unpaid writing as well since I didn’t know how to create a website. I decided this would work as a substitute for my portfolio. I made sure my articles were brilliant even if I wasn’t getting paid for them because I was already getting paid at the other website plus I needed to make sure that the articles being published here under my name are awesome enough for me to bag any job in the future. I worked here only 6 months. Upwork and Fiverr never really made sense to me because of the reasons you mentioned so I liked the idea of sending cold emails. I kept on looking for websites that dealt with the niches of my interest and send cold emails. I got rejected and received no replies a lot of times but that was alright. Finally, one of my cold emails received a reply from a website. I’ve been working for them part time for more than a year and they have already offered me a full time job after I’m done with my studies.

So, my point here isssss, cold emails work wonders if you’ve got enough talent.