The secret is in establishing long term business relationships with your contractors. I've invested close to $10k on Elance over the course of about 50 project

The secret is in establishing long term business relationships with your contractors. I've invested close to $10k on Elance over the course of about 50 projects. But that represents a fraction of my total outsourcing budget because the real work is getting done in one on one email discussions. You can leverage the work & the money you put into Elance (and others alike) by making sure every developer you work with becomes someone whom you can trust long term. And someone whom you can eventually contact & commission outside of Elance, to speed up the process. The key to making this happen is to reach out to them in your project descriptions. Ex- "the best candidate for this job will recognize the benefit of a long term business relationship in working with me." Posting a project is as much about selling yourself and the benefits of working with YOU as it is the project itself. If you want the best talent you have to be best kind of person to work with. That said, other tips; - pay promptly, be forthcoming with bonus, and don't nickel and dime - as others have stressed: be articulate with the requirements and what you expect out of the final product. Ie- make it easy for your developers to work with you - avoid large firms. Your looking for one man operations or small,talented teams Goodluck!