Luna

Types Of Scammers You Find In The Freelance Industry And How You Can Deal With Them Usually, a lot of people, especially writers aim to be a professional freelancer someday. And I will not deny it, Freelancing has its perks. A good pay, flexible hours and most importantly, the remote aspect of work. You can work on your bed in Pajamas or in a bikini on a beach in Hawaii. There is literally nothing that stands in your way (except procrastination perhaps). So, if you ask me whether freelancing is a good option? I would say, yes, it is one of the best ways to make money doing what you love. However, I won’t lie to you. It has its disadvantages that nobody talks about. Freelancing is great but like most things in life, it isn’t always specifically ‘good’ or ‘bad’. There are good days where you make hundreds of dollars in just a few hours while some days you can barely pull yourself out of bed after seeing 0 responses to your pitches. And most days are a combination of both. There’s a bit of good work and a bit of meh. However, if you are new to freelancing and especially if you’re considering it seriously for long-term, here’s a handy guide on the kind of scammers you’ll encounter and how to deal with them without losing your shit. When you are just starting out, it can be truly exhilarating to see work listings for $200 to even $500 for a single article. You want to jump right at it and grab it before any one else can. And that is exactly what these ‘employers’ want. Now such people fall into three broad categories, let’s take a look at what they do, how they do it, why it leaves you with nothing and what you can do about it. 1. Free Content Mongers These are the most commonly found online scammers. They lure you with promises of huge pay. You get excited, start working immediately and deliver high-quality pieces one after the other. They tell you to make an invoice that they’ll pay off at the end of the month. And before you know it, the month ends and suddenly they are nowhere to be found. Your mails go unanswered and the contact number will often cease to exist. In your enthusiasm to grab that huge dollar stack, you ended up giving them 10-15-20 or god knows how many articles for free. And there’s pretty much nothing you can do at this point. It’s like they have vanished in thin air, taking your best pieces along. How to deal with them? Don’t wait for the end of the month to get paid, at least not initially. When it comes to long-term clients that you trust, you can work on the month-end invoice basis but for new clients, it’s a strict no-no. Since you can’t exactly differentiate just by their job listing, the only foolproof way of saving yourself from being scammed is to get paid per article for a few months. Instead of creating an end of the month invoice, send a daily, or if that’s a lot, at least a weekly invoice. This way, even if they are trying to dupe you, you’d know sooner and won’t lose a month’s worth of effort. Try to establish milestones and get paid immediately after you submit the article (or video/graphics/GIFs/whatever skills you are offering). And although it might feel weird at first, the genuine clients will appreciate the professionalism and the scammy ones will start keeping their distance. 2. Paid testers Now this is one interesting category of scammers. They are genuine, they have a real website with real content from real people. But none of it is paid for. Apparently, they make an account on popular freelancing sites, select comparatively new freelancers and offer them $50-100 per article once they are selected. Now this gets the newbie excited and he or she agrees. Now, the catch here is, in order to be selected, you have to give a test. A written test. Basically, write a free article so they can judge your writing skills. And while this seems 100% plausible, the thing is none of the candidates are selected. All of them are given this test, every one is given a different topic and by the end of the month, the company has accumulated over 30-50 ‘test articles’ that they publish on their site before moving on to hunt for some more new freelancers. How to deal with them? This is honestly the most baffling category to deal with. Because, in reality, a lot of genuine employers do ask for a test article and not every company can afford to spend hundreds of dollars just to find the right candidate. Genuine companies often interview/test a lot of people at once and it seems quite unreasonable to expect them to pay money to every person that pitches. Although, when you see the same situation from the perspective of a freelancer, even the freelancer sends a ton of pitches before landing a solid gig and it can get exhausting to keep having to write ‘free tests’ for every potential employer. The worst part is even if you spend hours creating a high-quality post, there’s a strong chance most of the pitches will not be selected and those posts will just lie around in some ‘WORK’ folder on your desktop. Sometimes one of these ‘free tests’ can land you $1000 gig while most of them may just tire you out with no cash in hand. So, you can’t straight up deny writing free tests nor can you write a free test for every one. So, when it comes to dealing with ‘free tests’, I’d suggest having personal boundaries instead of setting external rules. For example, what I personally do is, I run a quick background check on the employer. This includes scanning their websites, social media presence, the feedback on their profiles, reviews, literally whatever you can find. If it seems legitimate enough and I sincerely believe I can be a good fit to their company, I usually agree to give the free test. But I have my limits. I do not write free tests that require hours of research and multiple revisions. I usually try to keep the word count between- words. Because honestly I believe a 1000 word article is more than enough to analyze all the skills, style, voice and whatever it is they are looking for. Sometimes you meet legitimate companies that may ask you to write a 10,000 word ‘test article’. In these situations, take a look at how many pitches they already have or if you really stand a chance. Because if they already have like a 100 pitches, your 10,000 words are flying straight out the window. So, in most cases, it is not worth it to write 1000+ word ‘free articles’. Obviously paid tests are the best. I still remember when I was a newbie and a potential client offered me $11 for a tiny test. Opportunities like this really make you feel like your work is worth something. However, employers like these are super rare. Most will hog up your free content like we will see in the next category. 3. Online Scam Employees This is another popular category that will take free content from you. This one works almost similarly as the previous category, but they have slightly less of a conscience. They lure you with great offers, ‘assign’ you tasks, you diligently submit them. They seem genuine with a real website and a logo. You tell yourself you are off to a great start being published on a real website. But soon as the pay-day rolls in, there’s no employee, no logo and no website whatsoever. This time too you are left with all your work gone with no remuneration in return. However, what makes this category worse is that they will sell this content as their own to other genuine employers. So basically they are earning money off of your content while you lay in your bed crying for being duped. How to deal with them? Combine the tips from the first two answers and create a mantra for yourself. Thou shalt not wait till the end of the month to get paid. And thou shalt not write unlimited free tests in the hopes of landing a lucrative deal. Trust me when I say this, these two sentences will save you a ton of money and precious time. Moreover, when you start establishing boundaries from the first conversation itself, the company takes note of your professionalism. I compared my interactions with two clients, one where I have been too flexible about my work hours and pay, and the other where I have been serious about how many hours I can contribute to their project and what would I be charging for it. The first client tried to take advantage of my leniency and asked me to work extra time and deliver more articles than we had decided, for no additional cost. Whereas, the second client immediately sent me a deposit the moment I sent my first submission. They sent a mail before every assignment asking if I was available to write the next article and by when they could expect the submission. This experience taught me the most valuable lesson I have learnt in the freelancing industry. The way you communicate initially sets the tone for the rest of your work relationship. If you sell yourself short, they’ll buy you even cheaper.