Does that mean you found those sites less useful than the direct approach? Or was it simply that you were already getting a lot of unsolicited job offers in your blog comments and felt you had a big enough pool of talent to draw upon directly?

eLance, et all, fundamentally solve the problem "A customer has work available and doesn't know who can perform it to their specifications at their price point." For that, they take some money and give some headaches (e.g. wading through a lot of bids by companies which I would not consider using, which is a time cost of outsourcing that provides no direct value to me).

As my blog readership has grown, I've gotten to the point where just announcing I have work available will result in a handful of very talented people writing me telling me how they plan to do it. No middleman cut, no paging through 17 screens of Yes Sir We Can Make Your Site In HTML and CSS.

I love outsourcing, and I mostly love the freelancer sites. I just have a better alternative these days. If I didn't I'd be back on them in a heartbeat.