Focus more on particle effect composition and timing, instead of materials/shaders. It’s much easier to search material tutorials and cherry pick bits and pieces from them to use for your work, but composing your particle effects and improving timing takes time and lots of failure to understand. Materials/Shaders are foundationally a “1+1=2” concept, but timing, color theory, * thing *-over-life, are all very much a feel that you develop. Even studying someone’s effect that looks good, and trying to recreate it, you probably won’t be able to match it. But you can look at someone’s material and dupe the exact setup and get their exact result.
I think this holds even more true if you are a student, or learning in your free time. From personal experience, trying to develop and improve your effect feel and composition while actively working means you’re either going to be taking way more work hours making something, or you’re going to be spending a lot of late hours at work.
Also, no doubt this has gotten buried, and it needs to be updated, but I put this together a while ago for everyone.