Guys, I'm thinking about opening an account at Freelancer.com, and starting to work on some easier projects... Anybody has experience with this or similar websites / services?

I used peopleperhour for a while, its pretty tough as the competition is just so high. A really well thought out portfolio is the best thing I can think of and thinking out your pitch or getting help with it if your not used to pitching yourself/skills.

Presentation is everything and I know its a cliche but standing out from the rest is your best bet. Im talking from a graphic design aspect so I guess it depends on what your looking to do. Protect yourself though, there is a lot of scammers/users out there that treat freelancers like slave labour. Not happened to me personally but I know quite a few people that have had trouble. Most of all good luck!

I want to have my own spaceship and do interplanetary trading. :(

Read my resume, I can craft that spaceship for $250 in three days! That's what's keeping me off right now, I'm having hard time trusting this kind of employment.

you can check out 99designs.com
it's big, with a lot of work, from small and easy projects to big ones. i've seen scams in the past, but they were pretty rare.
also, a lot of the projects are guaranteed (payed in advance by the contest holder to the site; the winning bid gets the money).
things like a portfolio, or a huge experience don't matter. if your bid catches the eye of the contest holder, you have a good chance of winning (provided you improve it according to the CH's wishes).

I don't like the sound of this... Basically you work and hope to get paid. Thanks, I'll check it out later tonight.

Definitely research/invest in protecting yourself. This, plus lawsuits is what has kept me from trying to go anything alone. You don't want to be a in a situation where you do a ton of work but the customer's interpretation of "green" wasn't what they wanted so they won't pay (or any other number of reasons people find to get discounts/freebies). All people aren't bad (obviously) but the rotten ones can make the whole thing not worth it. Best of luck to you!

Some sites protect you from that. Where I work, if you consider the job done and the customer still insists it isn't, you can always call for an arbitrator (a non-biased reviewer paid for by the company) to review whether you or the customer is at fault. If the customer is found to be being picky or simply avoiding paying you, they'll force him to (They escrow the project money before you start work) and they'll put a mark on his profile about it.

I don't know what a livable wage is over in your neck of the woods, but there's a lot of undercutting on wage and folks have a hard time distinguishing talent from hacks on there. If you have nothing else going on, you may find some steady work that way, but no one I know has been happy with it (mostly graphic artists).

EDIT: Oh yeah, I don't know if they escrow wages, but getting paid can be tough.