There was a very interesting comment here, some mins ago about the quality of work on these sites. This dude was arguing that its cheap and mostly done by India

There was a very interesting comment here, some mins ago about the quality of work on these sites. This dude was arguing that its cheap and mostly done by Indians. Hell yeah its cheap work - and oDesk I'm looking at you. They've created swarms of data-entry workers who occasionally try their hands at web/software development. One argument is that they're increasing competition and polluting the freelance-ecosystem. But another argument is that these clients who hire the "cheap workers" are small-timers couldn't afford "the real programmers". So their market is entirely different. They aren't really eating our market share - just that those kind of "cheap" jobs are overwhelmingly more it's becoming harder to find niche jobs. This answers my own question in a way - focusing on experienced coders who have a reputation for delivering and not fucking up. And doing what I can to make their lives easy. Btw, I'm Indian. Bad code and not shipping on time has little to do with being Indian (or there wouldn't be so many Indians in the valley). Call them what they are - inexperienced and unprofessional programmers.