I have been working on Elance and Odesk for three years now. Mostly as a freelancer, but sometimes hired people too.

I can say this, on Elance, freelancers have to pay a fee in order to apply to jobs(there is also a free membership but only allows for limited job applications). From my experience, you will be able to find better skilled freelancers on Elance simply because the monthly fee will mostly weed out the poor performers. Of course, better skilled workers = better pay .

That does not mean that Odesk does not have good freelancers too, most freelancers have profiles on many freelancer websites, but it will be harder finding them from the plethora of freelancers.

I believe you have more of a variety to choose from on Odesk, but on Elance, you have a better chance at finding better quality. I used to search them both constantly to find designers to match my abilities for partnership, but never was able to find a decent design with a reasonable price.

Some of them will charge hundreds an hour which is simply ridiculous.

I use oDesk for hourly empoyees. eLance for set cost projects.

I have always had good experience using oDesk, like all freelancers the most important thing is to hire ppl with good review. I have failed to do this at first and had some really bad experiences.

To hire expert and active workers Elance is better than oDesk.

does elance really have a monthly fee? i couldn't find one

Why should you care how many spammers are there? Just ignore them ... )

True, you should not care, but the fee does scare them away .

Like I was saying, you probably can find the same people on both websites, I actually work through both websites too, but there are fewer time wasters on Elance.

I'll vote for oDesk.Just go for it.

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So far oDesk has just been burning up a whole lot of my time. I have applied to quite a few jobs and the ones that have responded engaged me in discussion of getting started and then seem to have just been swolled up by the either. I really do hope there are people there who aren't flakes.

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I am working in oDesk too since 2009 and I never raise my hourly rate so I could get clients easily and stable income. And oDesk is more trusted I guess. They protect the contractors from any scams or just playing around employers especially to those who post like a real job when in fact they're just gathering resources and contractors wherein they will provide test/exams but at the back of it - they like counting heads to do the job on their behalf. Been exposed to this kind of situation, I don't want to mention specific race here but this should be a heads up for starters who want to earn online specifically in oDesk. But I can assure you that oDesk staff can easily detect and cancel your applications sent to fake employers.