I read a study a while back on real estate agents. It said, contrary to one's first intuition, agents don't do better in hot markets. Instead, more people become agents reducing their high margin listings, then went markets cool, those agents leave so volume picks up but at lower profitability. Net-net, good agents make around the same money.

I believe freelance writing suffers the same changes in the market.

Further, polymaths suffer the most inconsistency, though they can also do exceptionally well when something become a hot topic. Their wide range of knowledge allows them to quickly integrate the new subject into the zeitgeist. Generally, a polymath's main reader is a polymath themselves. This, I believe, is what would also keep you, um, poor ;)

I've say this often and will say it again, almost all the writers I follow have under 10k followers. The only exception that comes to mind is Scott Galloway and Cory Doctorow. However, they run their writing like a business too. They don't get lost in the weeds like you or I ;)