What others have said... plus: * It's become very easy + cheap to post a project on these sites. So the sites fill up with thousands of tentative projects, from buyers who don't really know what they want and don't care much about the outcome. The "real" projects get swamped and unless you check each site multiple times per day, they very quickly end up a long way down any result lists. * "Real" projects tend to be posted by people who know what they're doing and how to do it, and who've been doing it for years. They will have built up networks of people they know and trust, and they either go direct to them or offer "Private" auctions to just those invited bidders. * Auction sites are cheap for small projects. But once you get above a certain size, they can become very expensive indeed, for both buyer and seller. A fixed-price $500 job is worth bidding on - but when you need a 20-strong team for a year, it's cheaper to go down the traditional agency route. * Big projects tend to be started by big companies. They will have HR departments, preferred-supplier lists, suitability requirements, plus a whole raft of legislation and tax considerations to worry about. Picking up an un-identifiable individual via an auction site is so far off their modus operandi as to be unthinkable for them. There's not actually any reason why teams can't be composed of remote-working individuals, even across time-zones. It can be done, if you pick freelancers with the appropriate skills and motivation. In fact it can be an extremely efficient way of working - I've built projects myself as a buyer by outsourcing very specific tasks to developers across the globe. If co-ordinated well, they don't need to communicate and there is zero interruption + distraction. But you need very good specifications! In working through these sites over a long period, I've come across some really big projects. Some were, as above, highly compartmentalised, and I contributed a small cog in a big wheel. Others were very closely managed. Most, though, start off as a small - even tiny - task but then morph - off the original site - into something very much larger. The sites will all have rules about not taking work off-site, and definitely discourage (often with good reason) users from doing this (lack of financial escrow being the main one). However depending on the situation it's certainly possible to do so without infringing T+Cs and I've had long-term clients who originally "found" me through one or other of the type of sites you ment
