I'm a non-English speaker who lives in a country with similar average wage (maybe even less).
I work from home atm while I'm finishing my studies.
Started with translation on the old Odesk/Elance platforms and scales the shit out of that. Then I moved over to Copywriting and I now make ~$2000/month.
This all happened in 3 years while I was studying so I'm hitting two birds with one stone.
Anyway, I contributed to several freelancing threads in the past (pic related) so my two cents are:
1. Before going fully into online jobs, have a real, stable job, savings or parents to back you up when there's no money coming in. It's a feast or famine deal with online jobs when you're just starting out.
2. Find something that you're good at. I always wrote awesome essays, etc. at school and my English is near native so I chose Copywriting after the first natural choice - translation.
3. Devour books and/or courses in your niche. Get knowledge and insight.
4. Go under a successful person in your niche for little or no pay, just for the experience and a pretty testimonial from one of the big guys.
5. Market yourself in forums, FB groups, contribute to Veeky Forums threads and clients will start coming in.
The most important part though is being consistent.
Set yourself goals like:
> posting 5 proposals for jobs every day on Upwork,
> posting some digested, valuable content you read or heard once a week,
Be visible and people will naturally see you as an expert, but that'll come further down the road.