Thanks!
(1) There's a very good chance those who hire you will hire you again or extend the projects out
(2) You now have ammo to get other better/more lucrative online freelance projects.
Do the online freelance thing for maybe two years and have tons of good real-world experience under your belt and then you have a shot at landing a full-time remote work position.
Just my two cents worth...
I suggest if you have a little time and don't need the money badly, cook up a project of your own. Managing even a small project that you aren't getting paid for and progressing in that is a good mark of dedication.
Other than that, spread around your resume, and post that you're looking for work. Never know what will come of it. Heck, I got a job interview and offer from another HN user here, because I asked if anyone wanted my skills.
A company I've run across before that only works with remote devs is Art and Logic: http://www.artlogic.com/ (absolutely no affiliation, I just know they're a remote company).
Off topic, but how do people determine how much a project costs? Even at a conservative $50 an hour, that's 6 hours to build an entire website. I can see start a rails project with mysql, building the schema and writing some simple controllers that display some markup for viewing profiles, but really - how could you create a complete website from scratch for $300?
http://jobs.freelanceswitch.com/
That being said, it has been a long time since I "looked" for work. But when I did I actively marketed for them and did not hit the freelance boards, So for me, I would most certainly post a "I am available please take a look at my skills if you are interested" here in HN.
I would throw some money into a LinkedIn, AdSense and Facebook advertising campaign and generally actively market myself. Reason being, when you are applying for gigs you are competing in a deep pool with a lot of variables, while the gig is real and you have less false leads, the chances of getting selected over someone just as qualified is lower.
With active marketing, you get more breadth or "surface area" if you will, you chase more false leads, but in the end you have more exposure and are competing in a smaller pool. They have contacted you and generally have only you or a few candidates in mind for a gig. The breadth also does not leave you heavily invested if you don't get the gig, because you have other coming in all the time.
Finally, I like active marketing because you generally enter the project in earlier phases than applying for a posted gig. When I did market, I entered most projects at the planing phase, which I like a lot more than at the build phase, as it gives me an opportunity to address items at that point instead of telling the client at the point that they are ready to build, that they need to go back and redesign stuff.
Now days, Euro and IBM take up all of my and my teams time, so we have not marketed for work in years, any specifics I would give would be rusty. Some of the marketing guru's on HN could probably give you specifics on where and how to maximize your return with a marketing campaign.
One of my companies works with an Eastern European dev shop on ELance. The company works for ~$18/hr for custom development work, which is done from scratch. Even at that rate it certainly equate to more than $300 for a site, however. :)
For the type of development we're doing it makes sense to out-source to Eastern Europe: For them this hourly rate is high and they perform quality work, for us we get to turn the tap on/off on quality development when we need it, with work turned around very quickly.
I think it is foolish to write off all Eastern European developers (and those from South America, Asia, etc) as code bodgers who slap skins onto Drupel.
So, there are good jobs on Elance and Odesk. There are also some real gems. Niche areas are good because there is less competition and the competition you do have may not be strong in that area. Developers posting jobs can typically see past the B.S. and are willing to pay. They know that hourly rates aren't necessarily important and support / flexibility / communication is worth more in project rates. Just because someone charges low, doesn't mean you will save time or money.
Sorry, I must have not articulated my point well, my post was not meant as a critique of Eastern European or Asian developers.
It was more a critique of the quality of projects on those sites as well as the expectations on those sites. It makes the economies of scale only viable to slap together projects and even at a slap together pace, you have to be bidding from a cost of living standard below most of the west. Sure there are some gems on those sites but you have to weed through a lot of crap to find them, most freelancers find it easier to get gigs through their network as opposed to weeding through these sites.
That being said, two of my best developers are from Romania and earn the same as US freelancers, a good developer is worth their weight in gold no matter where they are from.