From what I gather, it depends in part on the person. I never figured out elance but at one time was making over $200/week on textbroker. Yes, I felt the ratio amounted to slave labor but I was also clear a lot of the difficulties were on my end, not theirs. I am currently trying to develop my own sites, which have never made anywhere near $200/week. I remain torn between going back to those slave wages and continuing to gamble my time on a possible pay off somewhere down the road while, in the mean time, there is no income.
Contract programming? Try advertising on Kijiji/Craigstlist. There's always people out there who will pay you to make a website. Takes away the risk of not making anything from the site.
I don't happen to be a programmer. I have skills at doing things the world says cannot be done. There appears to be no money in either doing the impossible nor in trying to share information on how to do so.
