A note to starting freelancers: Stop using these sites as soon as possible. Build your portfolio and figure out how to get your own clients. Giving someone else 20% for finding work is not in your best interests, especially for repeat clients. If billing is too difficult for you to handle yourself, you might want to reconsider freelancing.
People echo this every single time. Let me give a counterpoint. I use oDesk.com for freelancing and I don't have to worry about billing at all. I just log my hours and go on about my day - at the end of the week oDesk automatically pays me, no fuss.
Sure if you live in a first world country find your own clients, but for the rest of the world finding your own clients is not only hard but really dumb. Why work for someone locally for peanuts when a client online will pay you 20 times more?
Anybody who lives in an area where the typical oDesk client will pay "20 times more" than local deserves some respect for merely eking out a living, considering the typical oDesk client pays peanuts for a "first world country."
http://OnSite.io doesn't charge any percentage, it's completely free for both sides. When it does start charging it will be on a SAAS basis for the hiring side.
I don't know how else I'd be able to find work aside from freelance websites. If there were some way to find tasks to do then I'd be more than happy to jump ship, but so far nothing has come up for me outside of freelance sites and I'm not sure about how to "market" myself.
To add on this -- 20% is the least of your worries. I've never had a good experience working with people who I had no connection to. Someone ends up being flaky or tries to take advantage. Referrals are the way to go.
