Which do you guys think has more pull with employers or decent paying freelance hirers? I’m looking for for $30-$40 an hour (more later).
Don’t need money urgently, I have a few years of savings.
Current skillset is I can build a fulll stack app (and have done 2) but am slow and can get stuck on some harder details.
I’m leaning towards doing full web apps for charities. I think they’ll have more weight than building a janky sidebar widget for Upwork reviews (I do plan to apply for work there eventually anyways though)
I would look into doing open-source/free work for free. You should be able to get more experience by doing more for a charity than doing smaller jobs here and there. I personally did a “production” level app to automate some of the work I was doing at one of my jobs. I learned a lot during the process. When I was applying for jobs, interviewers were impress with what I created.
Even after I finished the app, I felt like it could of been better. After learning more I realized that what I did basically was spaghetti code but it did the job well enough, was an excellent learning experience and looked great on my resume 
You could always do smaller side-jobs here and there to get some experience, and paid for your work. But I’d focus on gaining experience working on larger projects if your end goal is to get better, so you can get paid more reliably down the line freelancer, or thru a stable job.
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