I've had the opportunity to post various writing and development jobs as well as find design work on Elance. Headquartered in Silicon Valley, Elance is a high quality, well structured site. They monetize

From a client's persepctive, it's free and easy to post a job and get's indexed almost immediately for external search, whereas you could purchase an upgrade ($25) to be featured and viewed by even more providers leading to more proposals to choose from. Employers post project requirements and their respective descriptions in the following 8 categories:

In addition to the main category selection, you can opt to request up to 5 specific skills needed to complete a project. Thus helping save time filtering for the most qualified. On the topic of filtering thru for qualified providers, while your job listing is live you could have open communication with potential candidates regarding job specs as well as hide or delete any person's bid who might not have the sufficient experience or if the bid simply doesn't seem realistic.

If your budget is less than a hundred dollars or in the thousands, you can specify the fixed price amount you're willing to pay or state you are 'not sure'. On the other hand, you can setup hourly rates for part time gigs, full time or single jobs.

From a provider's perspective, the opportunity is limitless with earnings (less the service fee which ranges from 6.75%-8.75% of final proposal amount). Basic members get free "15 connects" each month which entitles them to 15 proposals in a single category, 5 profile keywords to appear in search and approximate 500 MB/Workroom Sharing Space. They can upgrade their membership to the following summary of plans where they can apply to more categories:

You can preview my basic public profile on Elance where it provides a snapshot of my work history there as well as my portfolio and other credentials.