I've setup profiles and worked on all the top ones and I'd have to say that my own site has brought in far more work then any of those sites have.
Yes, this is very true. If you work on promoting your own site then you would get more and good clients. Also, these promotions and postings on your own site is for life with you. You don't get trapped in changing rules of the platforms.
Why not try all of the above and see which one gets traction? You may need to use more than one to get a reliable stream of income anyway.
odesk is the best for the simple reason that you are not limited to any communication constraints. Odesk doesn't forced you to only talk to potential outsourcers only on its platform.
My default place to FIND freelancers is freelancer.com and my default place to find a one-off job is elance.com
You should create your own website (as mentioned above) to create a branding for yourself. From there, you can display your portfolio and past works. From there, go to ODesk & Elance for work. Go to forums to offer your services.
Try all of it, try all of it, there's nothing to lose anyway. See which among those freelancing sites best fit you. Experience is really good teacher - your own experience that is. You may not have the same experience as someone else's. Just sayin'
Hey , I have tried Freelancer and Odesk but none of them are good due to competition . You almost never get your project . I suggest you use Fiverr.com as you can get a lot of projects there and you can offer unlimited amount of offers . And its fun to use fiverr. Freelancer has become more of a site for Seo companies that have a lot of experience and workforce . People like us never get a chance there . Cheers.
Dear friend my experience with oDesk is not as good as your's. What i observed on oDesk is that clients are looking for very cheap price over there. Competition level is also very high!
There have been recent changes in the rating system Fiverr gigs: Even well-established vendors complain and some leave the site. Otherwise, you can try too SEOclerks: it's pretty flexible and better than Fiverr in my opinion.