I collected data from Elance feeds, in order to find what employers are looking for on the site. It’s not pretty: by far the most requested skills in terms of aggregated USD demand are article writing (generally “SEO optimized”), content, logos, blog posting, etc. In other words, mostly AdSense baiting with some smattering of design. It’s not everything requested on Elance, of course, but it’s a big part of the pie.
Not unexpected, but disappointing. Paying low wages to people in order to fool algorithms to get other people to pay a bit more might be a symbolically representative business model in an increasingly algorithm-routed and economically unequal world, but it feels like a colossal misuse of brains and bits.