I've been working for 5 years on oDesk.com. So far i am doing very well, but looks like i hit the limit: there is extremely little work (coding: Java, Actionscript, JS) priced over $35/h gross there, and while i am easily pitching customers on this kind of rates, i was unable to get anything more than that yet.

But: overwhelming part of the projects i do are total nonsense. Like, i did 4 very different clones of the infamous chatroulette, last 2 years after the original one (while even the original one failed to take off), i did stupid looking Flash games for which there are zillions clones around, etc. Only 'real' work i can remember doing in 5 years was some rather complex scrapers for a guy who is in sports betting business (sure they are making him a ton of money and were fun to implement as well), and some distributed network analysis software for a well-funded Valley startup. The rest was an obvious trash which was sure to get nowhere even before i started.

So i am thinking: if 80% of the customers are so dumb, and they pay $30-$35 per hour, they must be the poorest kind of clients to work for, so there must be a marketplace where i can get at least $50-$60 rates, just because i will be doing something with higher chances to bring profit to my customers, not so obvious trash? If so, how do i approach them, given i'm offshore (EU)? Or smart customers just avoid these sites and look for developers offline (which may sound like a good idea, i've seen the kind of pre-cooked spam 'cover letters' that are posted in dozens for every offer on oDesk and if i was a customer, i'd hate to get through them)?

So the question is, if freelance sites are a bottom of market (both in quality of developers and of customers, and therefore rates), then where is the middle tier and the top?