You are making a huge mistake assuming that everyone has ability to tell a mediocre from a 10x engineer, which is patently false assumption to begin with.
Market has information asymmetry baked in. Not everyone is informed, that's where you earn your bucks.
Both of you guys are posting from your real accounts a politically correct statement but you guys have showed no evidence that your method is really the superior one.
People at exon, large banking companies, stock brokers can make promises and a consultant/contractor can't change his mind?
No body cares about building sustainable business, most just want enough cash to retire peacefully.
1. Get foot in the door. Bid lowest and touch the codebase, oh now it's dirty and you've access to their secret.
Tell them, oh it's dirty code - it's unmaintainable crap. I quoted you the wrong rate, to deal with this I'll need $500 per hour I've other contracts waiting for me. But yeaa this is something which I had done last month for a different client. Now, I am busy, so just drop me a line on whatsapp if you don't find anyone else to do it. Leave this, "Anyone who can really do, will charge at-least 2x of what I am quoting"
2. Wait
3. Wait
4. You get the contract.
Don't regret for the ones who never get back to you, you'll make plenty from the one who tickle you the second time!
At $500/hr even if you are not the expert of the task you are undertaking, you'll find plenty of people on upwork to do it for 100-200/hr. Why? Those people just want to talk with a technical person who has clearly defined the scope of work! Most of those people are technically good from Russia.