I tried growing my web design business for 90 days and made $0. How do you know when to pivot/give up?

So a little context, I've been a self-taught web designer/developer since 2020, which just started as a fun hobby. I started to get more interested in it, so back in August of 2022 I wanted to see if I could make some money on the side with it. I was in the middle of my engineering degree, so I would only have a few months at a time where I could really be consistent with outreach, then I'd get too busy and would have to pause it. I ended up getting 1 paying client after a 6 weeks or so of outreach, who paid me $800.

Fast forward to Feb of this year, it was my last semester of university, so I had a little more free time than normal so I ended up setting a small challenge for myself where I wanted to make $10k in 90 days. I was still not 100% all in due to still being busy with school, the gym and social life, but I still set a goal of sending 3-4 cold emails a day (I took a pretty personalized route because I wanted to stand out, and don't like spamming people, which is why it would take a little bit longer for each email.) I initially focused on interior designers/architects with no site or an outdated/broken one then shifted to contractors/electricians who didn't have a site at all.

I wasn't perfect and missed a few days of outreach but after the 90 days these were my results:

179 emails sent

42 replies (14 interested and asked for pricing)

2 meetings

1 potential client (Sent him the proposal, he says he's trying to get to reviewing it but he's just swamped with work). The other person I met with said he wanted two sites done, was super hyped to get started, then he ghosts me lol.

So I know 3 months is far from enough time to want to "give up", but my head is getting skewed from being so close to landing a project, yet feeling so far away. It seems everyone who's interested, ghosts when they hear the price. (which I tried two models, first I said I started at $950, and more recently I'm offering a new model where depending on the project, if it's simple enough, it'll be $125/mo for 12 months minimum. Custom/more complex projects would be one-time payments around 2-4k).

It just seems like even if they are interested, it isn't a big enough pain point for them and they'd rather put their focus on other things in their businesses. Hell, I even had 1 inbound lead who messaged me first on Instagram, and they still ended up ghosting.

So I'm honestly pretty burnt out from reaching out to people, and I'm having a hard time feeling motivated to continue going, but I think something needs to change. Is it a sales problem? A numbers issue? Niche? Maybe I need to expand my services to offer SEO or ads that have a faster/more measureable ROI?

Would love to hear what you guys think and sorry for the long post there…

TLDR: Tried to grow my web design studio for 90 days, made $0, not sure if I should quit/pivot or just keep pushing forward even though my motivation to do so is ridiculously low.