I am a member of Freelancer but I never bid for a job because I am extremely busy at that time when I had signed up. But I joined the site which is formerly called Odesk, now called Upwork. I applied in some job posts and I was hired 3 times. The first and the second one was article writing and I earned a decent amount from those jobs. The previous one, I did Website Research and earned a pretty good amount. Due to extreme competition and that the site seems saturated with applicants, I took a break from bidding projects. It is not as easy as I initially thought.
To get a long term client, you should have this quality called 'perseverance'. It is not easy at first but if you keep trying, you can earn the amount you wanted. My friend currently earns about $1,000 in a month just for Website Research. She is not a techie person and admitted she is not very good even until now, but she's earning that amount which is considered big in my country.