[JoeDeveloper]

Ditto that. There are sites like freelancer.com, elance.com etc - but there is considerable overhead involved in vying for short-term gigs and negotiating terms etc.

I worked those sites for about 2 years and it was actually very gratifying and instructive - I built everything from twitter spiders to usenet picture google widgets and customized more e-commerce setups than I care to think about. It is definitely worth doing to test your mettle against players from all over the world, but ultimately it becomes a grind and a chore, there is a huge long tail of "5 pages + contact form" and "penny auction" clones that offers little opportunity for personal growth - especially at the race to the bottom prices that is the norm.

unfletch, if you are into Rails then I know that Assembla.com is always looking for fresh talent.