How to Be Scam Proof Online When Looking for Freelance Opportunities

When looking for freelance opportunities online, you need to be very cautious as there are many scams online that take away a lot of your time and effort. Also, many a times you might do some work in the best possible manner only to realize that you will not be compensated for all your efforts. This is quite common and hence it is important that you be extremely cautious with your work online.

Online freelancing or work from home opportunities have increased quite a lot lately helping writers, web programmers and web designers, etc to make some good money from the comfort of their home. Many people have taken this freelancing quite seriously by quitting their day jobs and working from home. The best aspect about these freelance opportunities is the fact that you get to work on what interests you most. This means that by doing what you really like, you tend to enjoy your work. This joy makes earning money fun and interesting. However, you need to understand the negatives involved with online freelance work too.

• Firstly, it is important to realize that not everything that is posted online is genuine.
• Secondly, you will need some experience and logical thinking to understand the fake or scam job postings online and not waste your time on them.

If you are someone who is new to online work from home setup or online freelancing, then it will be very difficult for you to differentiate between a legitimate job posting and a scam. While you need some experience to easily point out this difference, what you also need is some careful analysis of the job posting. Here are some basic things that we often don’t consider but the fact it, it is the small things that will usually indicate a scam:

Contact Information

The first thing that you should be absolutely sure about before you start working for anybody online is to get their contact information. No matter how big or small your freelance project is, it is very essential to have the basic contact information with you. As a matter of fact, if the freelance job is for a considerable amount of money, you might want to try contacting your prospective client in order to be sure that you are dealing with a genuine person.

A company that is genuine will usually contact you with clear, crisp instructions and details and get you started. This will help you analyze if the company or client you are about to deal with is genuine.

Further Details

When reading about a particular job description online, you need to make sure that the company is providing details in a well structured manner. The job instructions provided and the way the company communicates should help you evaluate their standing quickly. A company that is looking at a fraudulent deal will either ask you to submit some original work as a sample or get their work done from you and suddenly disappear without paying you.

There are also scams online that take your contact information and encroach your privacy later.

Bulk Request

When you get a request from a company that is offering you some bulk work, it is important to consider if the client is willing to make a part payment. If the client is hesitant, it is probably a scam that you should stay away from. There can be times however, when a genuine reason would have been involved. Therefore, you need to use your judgment on trying to understand the opportunities that are feasible and those that are not.

For being scam-proof and to understand the possible scams online, one needs to be highly attentive when looking out for online freelance opportunities. The above tips will help you to a certain extent however; it largely depends on your personal impression about a particular client and then deal with it appropriately. This sort of understanding is important and often it comes with your experience as an online freelancer.