Millionaire seems kind of a stretch, though the article linked to uses the phrase "dollar millionaire." The first company says 200 employees, $2 million revenue. The second one says $600k at $20/hour. So the first one is $10k per employee, the second one works out to 30,000 hours billed. There are only 8760 hours in a year.
My point is, these aren't freelance workers, they're businesses with employees. So "freelance" is misleading, and I suspect "million" is too.
I agree with ojbyrne's analysis of the numbers, that they seem less than advertised - although keep in mind that you can bill more than 8760 hours a year, especially on the internet where no one knows if you are a dog, or working on a project versus asleep, and you can bill the same hour multiple times if you get jobs that are similar. I agree with bdr that this sounds like an ad for eLance.
But I think the idea of this article is a good one. Someone who isn't weeks behind on all their deadlines (i.e., not me) should do a "Freakonomics" style analysis of some of these outsourcing sites. If you sign up as a buyer, you can usually see some type of statistics about past jobs that sellers did. If you could work with the people running the site you could probably get access to even more detailed analysis.
It would be interesting to know the average and median, as well as the top, monthly earnings for individuals on some of these sites. The sites differ in volume and nature of work, and some may be more suited to different skills.
Is it possible to pull off a North American level salary via internet outsourcing ? Does it require a secretary or wife to handle all the jobs and customer communications ?
I think this type of analysis has been done on ebay, but it would also be interesting to know the numbers for etsy.com.
My point is, these aren't freelance workers, they're businesses with employees. So "freelance" is misleading, and I suspect "million" is too.