For me, the biggest benefit to working with CC is the foreign currency exchange rate. I'm in Australia and we're trading at 0.72 US cents. So if I earn $100 in US, it converts to $142.18 AUD at this end.
The second biggest benefit is the lack of hassle dealing with private clients. There was a time when I worked directly for a couple of large SEO companies. Chasing payments, waiting for orders to arrive, researching weird topics, chasing more payments. Meh. Too hard. I kept one of the better SEO clients and ditched the rest. The same thing with my old private clients - I ditched the painful ones and kept the awesome ones. CC can worry about payments and finding new clients. It's not my thing.
These forums really helped me figure out where I was going wrong or what I should be doing when I first started out. I lurked for a long time trying to figure out some kind of strategy. I learned about getting accepted into various writer pools and applying for casting calls that interest me. Those are where big chunks of my sales come from each month. The requests are sometimes boring and the pay isn't always great, but I have the benefit of typing quickly (105+ words per minute) and the added bonus converting to a currency that makes it worthwhile for me play in those price ranges when there's not a lot of research time involved.
I still don't have a real strategy even to this day, and it's certainly not my only source of income, but I do earn a healthy amount twice a month from CC. It's enough to cover my mortgage payments and all living expenses, anyway, thanks to the favorable exchange rate. My other writing endeavors cover everything else I ever need or want comfortably.
So that 2 cents I was throwing in ... I actually just spent 2.85 Aussie cents
