From the other side of the fence, I can tell you its extremely difficult to find reasonable clients as a programmer on one of these sites. The expectations are almost always unreasonable, and the rates clients are willing to pay are very low.
When I had started using various sites of this type, my intention was to take projects at below my normal rate to fill in "dead time" -- I'd decided I could settle for $25 an hour. This number proved virtually impossible to meet except for the rare client who needed something immediately and was willing to pay $50-$75 to have something fixed.
The end result? I think competent programmers are driven away from these sites because the financial rewards are simply not worth it. I found getting projects at $20/hour a challenge, and $15/hour typical. To put that in perspective I was charging my more typical clients $50/hour at the time.
I think it really depends on your specific set of skills. If you have a niche skill that a lot of $2-3 an hour programmers aren't going to be able to duplicate, there will be a few higher paying gigs. I only joined oDesk recently but have already had some luck with Haskell development. If your primary skill is, say, PHP or Ruby you might have more trouble.
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From the other side of the fence, I can tell you its extremely difficult to find reasonable clients as a programmer on one of these sites. The expectations are almost always unreasonable, and the rates clients are willing to pay are very low.
When I had started using various sites of this type, my intention was to take projects at below my normal rate to fill in "dead time" -- I'd decided I could settle for $25 an hour. This number proved virtually impossible to meet except for the rare client who needed something immediately and was willing to pay $50-$75 to have something fixed.
The end result? I think competent programmers are driven away from these sites because the financial rewards are simply not worth it. I found getting projects at $20/hour a challenge, and $15/hour typical. To put that in perspective I was charging my more typical clients $50/hour at the time.
I think it really depends on your specific set of skills. If you have a niche skill that a lot of $2-3 an hour programmers aren't going to be able to duplicate, there will be a few higher paying gigs. I only joined oDesk recently but have already had some luck with Haskell development. If your primary skill is, say, PHP or Ruby you might have more trouble.