Elance

Elance is the best place to find web freelancers, period. Run as an auction house, buyers lodge a request for work to be done and sellers bid to do the task. Now, this is no small business. In 2006, Elance passed $7 billion worth of trade since its inception in 1999, meaning that it's presently providing well over a billion dollar's worth of outsourcing services to web industries annually for:

• website creation
• design
• copywriting
• translation
• editing
• programming etc.

That being said, it's also a flea market and it's certainly wise to nurture any professional relationship slowly. In cyberspace, a freelancer who has fleeced you is virtually untrace-able. So, make sure that you:

• check references
• devise a payment schedule that works for both parties
• never share too much intellectual property i.e. specify the type of project you want done, not exactly what the product is
• however, then define exactly what the work will entail and/or ask if there are any tasks that you have inadvertently left out that will change the time schedule
• if your project has become too large, break it into sub-projects and devise a satisfactory payment schedule
• ensure that you own 100% of the rights to the end result, including all images etc. 
• never pay in advance
• always infer/ suggest/ state that this will be an ongoing relationship if you're happy with the end result 

You'll find lot of the work being done is through freelancers based outside The West (frequently from Eastern Europe & India) as the profit margin for westerners is frequently too low. These can be terrific technical work like web design but ensure that you check any grammar, spellings and colloquialisms for banners or web headers etc.

From experience, I'd suggest getting any colloquial writing jobs done from within the major western countries because of the cultural divide. However, if you have good freelancers, you may consider getting the first version done e.g. in India and a second version done in the USA if there's a lot of work to be done. See more at Elance University.

In September 2007 Elance initiated two new features which should go a great deal towards improving the service even further with:

• Elance Chat, in which you can communicate (for FREE) with service providers &
• a blog, the water cooler, where you can communicate with other Elancers

Do I recommend them?

Absolutely, as long as you follow the basic precautions. Remember, Elance:

• has 100,000+ clients visiting every week looking for answers to their outsourcing problems
• is acknowledged the #1 consulting site on the web and is in the Top 1,000 most visited sites
• was awarded Best of the Web by Forbes in 2003

Just be careful and remember, there's over a billion dollar's worth of outsourcing trade going through Elance annually, so, overall, most folks must be pretty happy!