When he started on Upwork, he earned maybe less than $5 an hour for his work. Last time I talked with him, he completed lots of projects and he managed to increase his rate to $25 an hour. I think in the future he'll be able to ask even more from his clients, since his customers are generally happy with his work and keep giving him more work.

Of course, in many places in the work $25 an hour is still very little money and it takes a lot of effort to get there. But if one can manage to move to another country, it could be worthwhile. Certainly in Thailand one can easily live from $25 an hour, even when only working a few hours a day.

It's the kind of thing I'd be doing as a hobby anyway, but I get paid for it.

Hint: avoid the freelancer sites and instead hang out on developer/hobby code sites. You'll soon see that there are a fair number of people asking for help and are willing to pay, but most of the experienced developers just make fun of them. That's your opportunity! It's amazing how much money you can make by just being nice.