charges for elance.com

"We charge a transaction fee of 8.75 percent for each project," Rosati said. "And a subscription fee of $10 to $100 per month, depending on the size of the provider."

Last year 2005, about 100,000 projects were listed, and about half of those were completed and paid for successfully.

"But if the project is to build a Web site," said Rosati, "it's hard to compete with a Romanian- or Indian-based programmer."

The average programming project involving a database runs about $1,500. A more complicated job built on Microsoft's .NET platform averages about $5,000.

Agarwal's overhead is low. His 1,000-square-foot office space costs him $800 per month. It's where his 16 employees spend their days, sitting side-by-side like students in a computer classroom.

As for Agarwal, who handles all client communication, project management and even some of the more complicated programming, he makes between $2,000 and $3,000 monthly.

- In Northfield, Goran Paunovic, 29, runs a graphic design firm called Art Version (www.artversion.com). He designs logos mostly. On Elance, he charges about $300 per logo, compared to about $375 if the client comes from the offline world.

Paunovic makes about 100 bids per month on Elance, and wins 5 to 10.

- In Los Angeles, Steve Soto, 26, operates a graphic design company called Studio Soto (www.ssgraphicdesign.com). He has been using Elance since 2001 and has generated $157,000 in revenue through the site. That number accounts for 60 to 70 percent of his revenue.
He charges $150 to $200 for the design of a new logo.

"Let's say you go to a design firm," Soto said. "They'd charge $400 or more."