I can echo your experiences. I did manage to find a project management gig on oDesk, but after that have applied to many with no luck. The barrier to entry is too low, by allowing jobs that are $50 or even $500 for what amounts to a lot of work, everybody is usually driving towards the bottom dollar, versus having real companies/people looking for serious work.

I've also heard from the person that did hire me that they had been burned several times by developers that would give them poorly-built products, but because they weren't familiar with the details of how it was built, only found out weeks/months later when things started to break down.