You can't. And you shouldn't trust some John Doe and deliver the full solution upfront. I personally look for long-term tasks from "legitimate" companies. After some initial collaboration, you and the company naturally begin to trust each other. E.g. I'm paid hourly, but I don't use any control mechanism for that (like that odesk screensnapper and keylogger, ridiculous...). I just state how many hours I worked for some task and that's it.

If I were a web developer, I definitively apply for many remote web dev jobs you can find on HN's Who is Hiring thread. Try next month - and double your odesk rate.

I'll definitely try that, by the way - you don't happen to be looking for a full-stack Rails developer would you? :) Native english, expat from boston. I'm looking for a long term commitment project at the moment (40hrs/week).

Not me, sorry. I'm still on the contractor side of the life so far :)

You can also find bunch of Rails jobs at WeWorkRemotely. I'm for C++/core engineering jobs, which are quite rare in REMOTE space.

> like that odesk screensnapper and keylogger

Wait, what? Can you expand on that because if it's what it sounds like oDesk should be on every freelancers' shit list.

You open an application that measure keyboard and mouse activity and takes a screenshot of your desktop every ~10 minutes. Personally I like it. Guaranteed payment and no hassle over time tracking. I just work and get paid, what's not to love? I don't even need something like HarvestApp or PaydirtApp. I just work.

And if activity (nbr of keypresses and clicks) is below certain threshold (50%?), payment is not guaranteed.

You may want to look at sites with curated projects, like LetsWorkshop.com or Gun.io.

I believe Freelancer makes you give a credit card or a down payment before accepting bids.

That's incorrect.