Is this even legal?

Yes, it is completely legal. There is nothing wrong with being the middle man.

Just don't lie and say that you'll be providing the service directly.

Yes, this is legal. If done right this can make you a lot of money fairly quickly with little outlay of cash on your part.

Jon.

Of course it's legal. People do this sort of thing all the time, not just online but everywhere.

While total reliance on other freelancers may not be so common, several freelancers outsource some of their work to other freelancers when they have too much orders.

It is perfectly legit as long as you disclose it to your clients.

I think everyone who does this needs to ask themselves a few questions:

1. Will you have contact with the freelancer after done and can they still work for you? If not... do you have the ability or access to someone who has the ability to easily work on other people's work?
2. Will you be able to support this product once the freelancer is gone?
3. Are you charging enough for the unknown?
4. Do you have a plan of attack if the people you hire suck?

You could spend hundreds of dollars collecting different tutorials, maybe even a WSO or two that are step by step guides on the same or slight variations on ways to do what you are thinking about.

You could even put one together on how to put together a package like

1. 15 DOFOLLOW PR9 BACKLINKS FOR ONLY $25
2. 800 SOCIAL BACKLINKS + PING FOR ONLY $25
3. 20,000 SCRAPEBOX BLOG BACKLINKS FOR ONLY $25
4. 50 PRIVATE NETWORK BLOG POSTS FOR ONLY $25

as jonzathe's sig is offering in the first response to your post.
I'm not suggesting he's doing that, but I saw a tutorial once that pretty much laid out a plan to do something similar.

It is legal, just make sure that whoever you are outsourcing to not only does the job but does is correctly because all it takes is 1 bad situation like this to lose a customer..

So with that said be 100% sure to check previous work, references and that your outsourcer and yourself have a good line of communication as needed.

Gengis

It's legal and a lot of people do it. I've read ebooks on how to do this. Just make sure you hire good people to do the work.

Yes it is legal, it is actually very common

Absolutely legal and in fact many agencies outsource a large portion of their labor to contractors and freelancers, including my own. I will say that it is not as easy as that, however, and there is a lot to be said about the type of work you get from a quality, committed, company employee. Good freelancers are hard to find and the good ones can be very expensive.

So while possible and even common it is not so simple as to just get the job and outsource everything as an additional skill comes into play- management. Managing a team of people to accomplish a collective goal is difficult, and even more so if done remotely and with limited ongoing and/or face to face contact amongst your team.

I have found that outsourcing some of the lower skilled, monotonous tasks to less expensive foreign contractors can be well worth it. A tip with this is you get what you pay for. Take the time to look and see what the going wage for the position you are hiring for is and increase it by at least 3-7 bucks per hour, this will get you a very competent individual who will be highly committed to doing a great job for you and not try to take on like 150 hrs. a week from other people looking overseas for cheap labor.

I will also say take the time to get to know your contractor a bit, learn how to say "hello" or "thank you" in their native language, don't just treat them like a cheap hired hand. I will say right now that my company had taken on a Filipino contractor a couple years back and she is hands down one of the best employees we have, yes- we made her a full on employee, and I would be hard pressed to replace her with anyone from anyway. Hope this helps.