I have seen lots of ads for outsource.com on facebook. I signed up, input my skillset (php, wordpress, front end technologies), and now I am getting lots of emails about new job offerings that fit my skillset. Seems fantastic.

Well, every job requires a certain amount of "credits" that you must spend to make a bid, and presumably the lowest bidder gets the job. To get credits, you must purchase them, and then I think you might also earn them from being active on the site.

Has anyone used this site (or a site like it) with any success? I am very new to freelance; I have a 9-5 job but I am looking to pick up side work during my off hours. However, I don't want to end up buying a bunch of credits, and not getting any jobs.

I have Googled the site, and looked it up on Quora, but have not found any information. There is a generic "this site is great" review, and then a very negative review claiming its a scam, however, the long-winded negative review just seems to say "they asked me to buy credits, it must be a scam" so it was not very informative.

I hope this doesn't end up sounding open ended or opinion based, but have you used this site to get a job? Or is this site (and others like it) just a scam to get you to buy credits? All of the offers that show up in my inbox (hundreds since I registered a few months ago) just seem too good to be true.