Why do freelancers have few hours on average on odesk?

Question

Freelance

I reviewed quite a few profiles and noticed this thing: almost all freelancers with more than 100 hours have these hours spread out for years. And many more put in the profile, say $ 20 per hour, but agree to $ 10-12. Is everything really that bad in freelancing?

Answer 1

Nuance number 1: some work immediately for Odesk and Elance (for example, me). And if you look at my profile in Odesk, you can see that in the last six months I have worked 6 hours. But through Elance - ten times more.
Nuance number 2: some put, say, $ 80 / hour, but work "only" for $ 60 / hour. Agree, the discount percentage is similar, but the amount is slightly larger.
Nuance number 3: Some customers offer to pay "by" the exchange. For example, I was once offered $50/hour either by PayPal (no commission) or Odesk (with their commission I got $45/hour). Agreed through Odesk.
Nuance number 4: as colleagues pointed out above, at some stage you can simply be intercepted and made a remote developer in some office, where you will receive money no longer through the exchange. It wasn't like that with me.
Nuance number 5: a person can have his own blog site, and also attract customers through it (in addition to Odesk and Elance). In this case, it will also work past the exchanges and the clock will not glow.
So, all is well. You just need to value yourself and be able to sell and provide quality services. I saw a lot of profiles with good rates and a lot of hours worked. Apparently, you are not analyzing those.
Set the following parameters in the odesk filter, and you will find who you are looking for:

Answer 2

I have a lot of hours
and the rate is $120 I
agree to 50
in the context of Russia and 12 hours is a good rate,
just someone probably tries to start and does not go, or just a hobby
or did it until he found a permanent job
in general, freelancing is not for everyone

Answer 3

With full employment and a 5-working day, more than 1.5k per month comes out.
Quite good for Russia and Ukraine.
And as far as I know, odesk is often intercepted by firms

Answer 4

And what about $10-12 an hour is bad?