Have any of you guys used oDesk to get or assign contract work?

[Rick Lee]

I just set up my profile last night, listed competencies, tested very high in some of them and listed my price per hour. I had to go to bed before I could get any farther and will continue reading tonight. But I was wondering how it all really works. Does work come to you or do you have to compete with others to apply for jobs listed? Depending on the field, can you get as much work as you can handle? I'd love to do some of this stuff full time on a consultant basis and quit my miserable job like a bad habit. Or should I just view it as beer money?

[widebody911]

I had a g/f years ago that used a similar site (e-lance?) for web design work. She got a couple of piddly little gigs, but not anything substantial. The problem was every out-of-work two-bit hack had a line in the water.

[Rick Lee]

I figure there's a lot of competition. But I scored in the top 8% for German translation on the competency tests and that gets a little flag by my name. There are something like 4000 others on there for that skill, so I wonder of that's gonna get me better gigs.