[gs7]

Absolutely. I skim every single job posting under web programming on Elance and sometimes a week goes by before one shows up that's promising enough to apply to. It's not ideal, but to me this is fine right now because I'm really just doing this as a hobby. I like the short and sub-$500 fixed price projects because it allows me to test the waters with a new client. If they are too annoying to work with, I get the job done quickly and move on. My goal is to pick up recurring clients this way over time that have already been vetted by me with these smaller projects. For that Elance is not too bad. Upwork on the other hand is a huge mess...

There are definitely some sites out there that help higher end developers and clients to find each other. I see gun.io mentioned a lot. Someone posted about trygigster.com here too. The problem I have with those sites is that they focus too much on the top 5% of developers and huge company clients. There are plenty of competent freelancers that aren't rockstar developers and many good clients that aren't Fortune 500 businesses. It seems there isn't a marketplace for those mid-range freelancers and clients. I'd love a site like that!