Hi philipy

I'm using all three websites as a buyer and a provider. I sell services in the business consulting domain both as an individual and team manager. I pay a Guru subscription and an Elance company account. I myself offer business consulting services as an individual and my team members are BI & data mining analysts.

When it comes to cost oDesk gives the most bang for the buck for new providers wanting to start as freelancers. Although on oDesk there appear to be less jobs than on Elance, the quality is very good as I have been able to complete over 13 projects at oDesk myself and earn quite good money.

Elance is a bit difficult for new people wanting to start out because they are pricey. In my experience their support routinely gives bad experience up to the point where they don't answer emails or telephone calls. However, they have a good amount of projects open and provider companies. It is very easy to find good person to work with, just as is the case on oDesk.

When speaking of oDesk, their support is excellent, and they don't have as huge cost model trying to charge you at every incidence possible. They are very humble by charging only a 10% fee with absolutely NO other costs. Their I.T. infrastructure is excellent. If you are a company account as I am, then they don't charge anything for the number of team members. Elance charges for that, too.

Guru has good job posts, and in my experience many jobs expire without hiring anyone. This probably has nothing with Guru, but is a nuisance. They are a bit pricey especially for Vendors, considering their infrastructure is on lowest quality of all three providers. They don't even have a RSS feed and you can't even open job listings for categories you haven't paid. I have not tested their telephone support yet, but when I tried to migrate my feedback record from oDesk, they said they didn't want to support that.

As a summary, yes it is possible to earn money and find good providers. Just need to know how to do it :)

Hope my experience helps anyone else to evaluate these websites.

- How much experience do you have with using these sites?

I have posted between 75 and 100 projects as a "client"
and
I have completed between 10 and 15 projects as a "provider"

I have been using outsourcing websites since 1996.

- What are typical experiences, and what are good and bad experiences?

Typically, my experiences have been very good. I've found that clear, consistent and frequent communication is key to having a good experience.

An example of a good experience:
I asked for a trouble ticket system to be created. The programmer I selected was located in Russia and worked conciensiously through the process and to this day, continues to update the program as required.

- Thoughts on cost and quality of work done through these sites

You will receive the best quality and cost if you know exactly what needs to be done and can communicate it well. Since I am a programmer who ocassionally requests the help of outsourced labour because I get busy, I can easily convey in a language that is easy to understand exactly what needs to be done.

Again, since I know exactly what needs to be done, I know how long it will take to complete and as a result, how much it will cost. Proper Gannt charts are a good idea. You can easily outline tasks and assign landmark costs to each step.

- What are the comparative strengths and weaknesses of the different sites?

In short, the difference betwen Elance, Odesk and Guru.com comes down to 2 things. First, each site is comprised of different people with different skills. There is almost no ryme or reason to what type of people monitor which site at which time and as a result, it's often best to compose an RFQ at each site. Second, each site has a different workflow. Elance for example requires that providers are "certified" with simple tests.