If within a year you made only a thousand dollars, why didn't you spend more time working on a side project, or sharpening your skills? Maybe the ones you currently have are not much in demand?
Also, freelancing sites do have a lot of low quality jobs, but if you spend some time digging around you can find decent jobs; e.g. I, a poor country resident, have found jobs that made me in a week as much as you claim to have made within the year.
And btw, I'm thirty-something, university drop-out and with a couple of huge holes in my CV. But that's not what I bring forward when asking for a job. Instead I project the most confident image that I have for myself and that's my advice to you, too (i.e. don't focus on the negativity of your current situation, it's not going to help you find a job).