Have you used sites like rentacoder.com and guru.com?

Question

Have you ever used person to person outsourcing sites like rentacoder.com either to find work or to commission work? Do these sites work? Which are the best sites? And what did you think of the experience?

Answer 1

I have used RentACoder for several months.
I have found work but, better, I have found web-design companies withwhom, after first contact through RAC, contact me directly for on-going work.
Commissions taken by RAC are pretty high, max prices accepted by clients are very low, targetting "third world economies coders - 10$ / h", time scales demanded are unreasonnable (10 days for a full AJAX website!)
Many bidders (programmers) are takings jobs because of their lower bid, but then fail to deliver, so you get a re-post from the client.
Competition is hard, and you get 70% bad programmers, 25% relatively ok. There are a lot of amateurs there.
Specs from clients are NEVER complete: beware! The project you take on will grow easilly to three times what you expected: the client requests a small additional feature, then another, then another... but does not renegociate de fees...
Good luck!

Answer 2

i just joined elance but i havent used it. i havent heard of the other two but ive read good things about elance........if thats worth anything