I always stayed away from Freelancing sites (to work) - I tried hiring a couple jobs out, and got a guy who ripped me off (my fault, I paid via PayPal, and had

I always stayed away from Freelancing sites (to work) - I tried hiring a couple jobs out, and got a guy who ripped me off (my fault, I paid via PayPal, and had no guarantees) and then a couple Indian shops that couldn't handle the basic instructions (obviously not even medium grade developers available) - I did hire one freelancer to do something for me and he did a great job. I would see things like "Senior PHP $7/hour" and never considered working myself. However, last summer I stumbled onto Upwork (actually a post off HN was where it came from) and I saw a lot of jobs I could do for a reasonable amount of money. I've increased my average billing rate 50% since then (to where it's more than I could make locally, probably) and have found some flat-rate clients that have paid a large amount of cash for simple stuff. Once in a while, the whales come in. It did take a while to build up reviews and I spent a lot of time applying and not getting anything back. Once I hit some sort of "critical mass" I started getting responses to nearly every job I applied to. I did have a client who changed his mind every day, then tried to dispute the entire cost of his project (which due to him was grossly overspent) and he wound up losing eventually. It was at the time where Upwork had a lot of hatred in the blogosphere and it made me nervous that they would side with the client simply because I was replaceable. Their mediation process was a joke, a nearly robotic-like woman would periodically ask "have you resolved anything?" when it was obvious it wasn't resolved - due to the caps lock yelling between us and the cursing. However in the end, they did go back to their hourly screenshot/activity monitor, decided only like 2% of my billing wasn't guaranteed payment and I had to refund a few bucks. If only they had done that in the beginning, it would have saved weeks of nervousness (the client was holding a negative review hostage for a refund) - but they're setup to hope disputes to fizzle out on their own and someone caves in without any intervention. That sucked. I will say, for all the negativity Upwork generates, I have made quite a decent amount of money on it just working part time (I have a day job) and find so many jobs I could apply to that I have to pass on them, and sometimes have more work than I can handle, at rates I am quite happy with. It has been a rollercoaster, where the summer was quite hot (literally) and winter cooled down a little bit, and hasn't been as hot as it was last year. I'll have to see if this year winds up being the same, with larger priced projects that I'm well-suited for. I think it definitely depends on the type of work you do. Development has a lot of cheap asks. I would imagine artwork/design is as well. But system administration I have flourished, often after people have been disappointed by cheap overseas labor or just junior level people doing stupid things.