[sergiotapia]

Completely disagree. I've been freelancing on oDesk exclusively for 2 years now and I make a great living. Don't be stupid and set your rates to $10/hr, you're obviously going to compete with the bottom of the barrel and work with shady clients.

Up your rates and suddenly shady guys don't contact you, and good clients recognise talent and you get a good paying job.

[noodle]

Let me put it like this. I did an oDesk rate analysis. 5 star developers in my niche charge SIGNIFICANTLY less than I am right now, and I'm considering raising rates.

You might be making a fine living. But I suspect that if you're a good developer on oDesk, you'd be making a lot more off of oDesk.

[sergiotapia]

Let's put it this way. Working in my country, Bolivia - I used to make $X/month.

Switching to oDesk and raising my rates immediately helped me land $X+400%/month. Immediately. It was just astounding to me. I'm sure I could earn more on other websites, and as a matter of fact I'm currently attempting to join TopTal.com

I've heard great things about that site and the way they operate.

[noodle]

You should raise your rates and get off of oDesk. Though it sounds like that's what you're about to do, with TopTal. If you're a reasonably experienced Rails developer with strong English skills and you're not charging at least 100USD/hour, you're underpaid.