What area to upgrade for freelancing (Graphics, Programming)?

Question

Career in IT

Good day.
I have a serious choice before me. What area to pump for successful freelancing.
The fact is that I have been a freelancer for a year now and it was not bad at all to earn money in my specialty. I am an engineer with 5 years of experience.
But now there are fewer and fewer orders, payments are delayed. Of course, I can get 70-100 tons in the office, but I live 80 km from Moscow - traveling by train is minus 6 hours every day, I don’t want to shoot in Moscow, I lived in it for 8 years, I don’t like it there. Freelancing is much more convenient.
I have a family, and I am responsible to it, so I decided to try to upgrade myself in another area, since I am still young - 27 years old.
I am interested in the following areas:

• Programming . Here I saw Rails with a frontend (html/slim, CSS/Sass, JS, Git, SQL, TDD, etc).
  The advantages of this direction are a high salary, a large abundance of work (freelance, remote work), work with foreign customers. Also, logic and mathematical thinking have always been well developed - therefore, difficulties should not arise.
  Cons: - I don't know if I'll be interested. Passed a paid Htmlacademy course - it seems interesting, but it seems not. Unclear.
  
• Illustrations . It was always interesting to draw. But do not think that it is artistic, - just like that I drew all sorts of crap in notebooks.
  Pluses - I like it, decent salary, work with foreign customers;
  Cons - it takes a lot of time to study 3-5 years to be competitive. It may not work out - if there is no vein of an illustrator / artist. Expensive equipment.
  

My thoughts so far converge on the following:
Level up in the frontend - get the "Front-end develop" achievement. Create a portfolio, gain experience).
Move to Back-end (Ruby/Rails).
At the same time, learn to draw and upload work to stocks.
I look forward to your advice and guidance.
Thank you all in advance.

Answer 1

Level up in the frontend - get the "Front-end develop" achievement. Create a portfolio, gain experience).
Move to Back-end (Ruby/Rails).
At the same time, learn to draw and upload work to stocks.

Well, you've solved your problem. What else is needed? Try what you can and do what you like. How everything will turn out for you - hell knows, Baba Vanga has a day off today.

Answer 2

Sales. You need to pump sales. The rest can be googled if necessary, this is of course if the choice falls on programming. Any problem can either be googled or outsourced, but in the absence of orders, no skill will help

Answer 3

Hi goo.gl/BcpNXw

Answer 4

I have not tried myself in design, and I am just learning front-end, but I can say that as soon as you start making websites, you will immediately decide on the direction. It’s better to spend half a year looking for a way than later after 2 years to say “why am I doing all this”, “but how tired I am”, etc.

Answer 5

Yes, the fact is that it is still difficult to decide)
Programming is a good start for the future. Here I am sure that I can handle it - but I don’t know if it will be interesting for me. Can turn into a routine
Illustration is an interesting thing, but which may not give the desired results if, for example, there is no proper taste and skill.