I agree. More than half of my work has come from CL. The nice thing about CL is being able to win work locally if you are in a larger metro area.

Even if you are not in a big CL city, many replies to job ads are from overseas or from developers with limited communication. If you can communicate well and provide a solution for exactly what the customer is asking, you can win some good (and potentially long term) work.

But as Ryan says above, you need to weed through a lot of bad listings and be persistent in your search.