Ask HN: I have some questions as a new iOS Freelancer

Hey HN,

I've been working in a small startup as an iOS freelancer for almost 2 years (bug fixing, features implementation, etc). I landed this contact by publishing two apps to the App Store (one got a fairly good amount of downloads) and doing some small gigs.

Anyway, I have some free time now because this small startup doesn't have much work for some time. My first reaction was to go after some projects to work on. I stumbled upon UpWork and Guru and, as everyone else seems to be saying, it's pretty hard to compete with some programmers applying to work for $15/h for example. I'm trying to maintain my price as $35/h (I receive $30/h after UpWork's fee) as I think it's fair for my service, but I not having much success with that. Is my price too high? Is my cover letter wrong? I've never applied to this kind of thing before and I'm having a hard time writing a good letter... do clients on websites like UpWork even read all cover letters? Some projects has over 100 proposals.

I have tried to move to websites like Crew and Toptal (I don't think I have enough experience to toptal yet). Can anyone help me?

Thank you!