If you're just doing Upwork type shit, waiting for customers to come to you... it's just a commodity. So yes... when people search they say, "Well, I don't want the cheapest... those tend to be bad..." But look, Upwork is literally AIDS and will give you cancer of the herpes sores. Go to local businesses in-person, educate them... this creates demand for your services. Talk to the manager, build the relationship... this creates trust in you as a service-provider. Online freelancing is a race to the bottom. In-person prospecting will net you better clients, better projects, and better pay.

BUT... start small, make sure you can do the work at a professional level before you charge for it. It's OK to do a few for free... way less stress than taking their money. Do a few trial runs... get comfortable with the work. Your confidence will grow and then you'll start commanding industry-standard pay. The money does not matter at all right now, you need practice and references.

I've always read it's better to charge by the hour, but that you also want to have a contract with an outline/description of the project and expectations. I'm having a hard time getting past this because how in detail are you supposed to go with that so they know what you're responsible for and what will cost extra?

You can add in some assumptions in the SoW / MSA / contract. Like, "Will only be responsible for work in XYZ Repo, not other Repos or 3rd Party Services." It's really whatever you want to put in there, I start with a pretty long standard list (based on the project type). "Won't customize administration tools or workflows of WordPress / Magento / ABC Platform," to, "Will utilize Foundation / AWS / blah blah blah."

You can always do work that is in a gray area, or clearly out of scope of the contract, if you want to be nice to the client. The contracts are for clients that you don't want to be nice to. They are levers you can pull to get the client back into a manageable space. If you don't give yourself a lot of levers, you're left with just "walk away" when the shit hits the fan... and typically that option doesn't include getting paid.

Even for "simple" projects now my Statements of Work are 25+ pages. Templatized as best I can, and all reviewed by a lawyer I trust. I don't sign contracts that clients send me, without stipulating that if that contract and the one I sent over are ever at odds, then the contract I sent over wins. You have to protect yourself, especially as a one-man-shop. You can't afford to get bogged down in shitty squabbles, so like with most things... "a stitch in time saves nine" here. Longer, more explicit and detailed contracts save you time.