How to recognize fake/scam jobs as a freelancer?

Freelancing is a huge marketplace having millions of billions of freelancers all over the world. Similarly there exist a gigantic group of employers that prefer to hire freelancers to get their work done. But the problem is that like other business markets, the freelance market also has become a victim of fraud in several ways like

·         Fake Employer may wish to get free work from freelancer. They just get work and don’t make payment.

·         Some freelancers may put a scam project over the internet just to understand what other freelancers will bid for this type of work and what type of arguments freelancers will make to convince them.

·         The scammer may simply post a job on a freelance site to collect personal information of others.

     

     So it has become a problem for freelance newbie’s to identify if the employer is a potential client needing your expertise or just a sketchy person in employer disguise.

I will present you some key points to identify the probability of a scam job/scam employer. Well, there is not a hard and fast rule to pinpoint any bad job but yes as you may have heard that “Prevention is better than cure” so be selective while bidding as a freelancer at any website. So let’s start with it. You just have to check some points before bidding a project listed below:

·       Check if the employer payment method is verified or not. Freelance sites normally charge at least 1$ just to check if the account information provided by an employer is correct or not. If they succeed to withdraw amount they mark the employer payment method as verified. Fiverr (a non-conventional freelancing website) provide ESCROW payment method (a third payment authentic organization) which provides more payment security to its clients. Freelancer at Fiverr asks employer to ESCROW payment before starting the job and after they complete their task successfully this payment is transferred to freelancer account in other case payment is transferred back to Employer account.

·      Check if the Employer has already paid any amount for any task like here the employer from the UK have paid $500 prior to this listed task. If this is not the first task of the employer than his probability of a verified employer increased. It shows that the employer is authentic and knows the value of a freelancer knows the importance of closing a deal.

·     Check for client feedback if he has any just to identify employer’s behavior and other freelancer’s response. Actually Freelance market is also dual side marketplace where both freelancer and employer repute mater. Because if the employer will not pay amount and freelancer report it to the freelance site, they will block employer (based on credit card/email address) for rest of his life. 

·       Check employer belongs to which country. This point is just to identify that if the employer belongs to a third world country but he is willing to pay very high for a project than the project actually deserve than he could be a scam.

·      The next important step is to read the description of the project. E.g. if you are a developer then you probably know better about your domain and can identify if the project brief looks original or fake. Let me mention one thing there are always chances that the employer is new in freelance market and yet he did not verify his payment method but if his project descriptions are appropriate e.g. he mentioned that abc.com is his website address and he wants to change his logo, he belongs to this country etc. so in-short if his description is at such a level that you feel inclined than you should go for it. 

·      If the employer is trying to get your personal information at very start then he can be a scam.

Summary:

In short, if the employer has verified payment method, he already has worked with any other freelancer and has paid him, his project description looks original and his proposed budget for the project is appropriate then there is a huge probability that the project is not fake.