How To Become A Freelance Writer Without Wasting Your Time On Scam Services


To make decent money as a freelance writer, you need to learn how to sort reliable clients from scams. It can be hugely disappointing to make a good job and never get paid for it. However, there are experience-proven ways you can use to identify scammers.

  • Do not pay for getting a job.
  • Paying to start on a project is a nonsense. Good clients come to the market with their own money they are willing to pay for quality writing. Do not trust in promises to return your “deposit” once they make sure your writing is up to the mark. For this purpose, honest employers would have used your portfolio and writing samples.

  • Do not agree to do part of the project for free.
  • A dishonest client might ask you to do a couple of pages for free, as a test of your abilities. Although not everyone who asks for it is necessarily a scammer, think twice before accepting such offers. The odds are high that you will not get any job but then see your “test” writing on their website.

  • Do not give out too much personal information.
  • Some of those who pretend to be clients are just fishing for your personal information. Do not rush to give new clients your banking card number; use PayPal or other safer ways of payment. Do not make any deals with those who ask about your physical address or ITIN – no freelancer client actually needs to know this.

  • Do not consider working for exposure.
  • Many freelance writers are approached by websites who ask to do free work for them, just for the sake of “exposure” on their resource. Although technically it’s not a scam, accepting such offers would put you at a great disadvantage. Writing job has its price, and “exposure” on a website of which you have never heard before is not worth anything.

  • Avoid jobs with vague descriptions.
  • A subtle kind of scamming is when you accept an offer that sounds good, but then the client gives you the job details they have omitted before. You might be required to write more pages than initially agreed, or the work might turn out to be much more complicated than it appeared.

    To insure yourself against “ballooning” gigs, ask the client to sign a contract. Although a contract offers no 100% protection, most scammers would not put their signature on anything. Besides, watch out for unclear and too general project descriptions – they may indicate a scam scheme.

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