The Scam Client

One thing that is sometimes hard to spot is the person who is advertising for a freelancer but is not really on the up and up. There are a few tips to which ones these might be and I'll cover a few of those here.

1 - The person on a freelance website that says they will not pay for the work but give you a good referral instead. Forget it. This person will take a job that will supposedly only take 5 minutes and milk it for as many hours as you will tolerate before quitting. And you get nothing in return except a "good" review. I watched one guy do this and then not even give out top reviews. He would complain about poor communications or not finishing the project etc.

Get more for your 2 cents

2 - Always check on the previous programmer/designer or whatever because a sure sign that the client is not to be trusted is a lot of previous freelancers working on the site. One of the things I usually do is ask to speak to the previoius programmer. If it illicits a response of "oh he just took off and I don't know where he is" but the site is 90% programmed, warning bells start going off. Or if the programmers did as they are supposed to do and left a log of what work was done on the site and you see quite a few over a short period of time (2 or 3 in a year or 2) and the client compains that they just weren't trustworthy or whatever, take a hard look at the situation.

He may be a jerk but he IS rich

3 - One that I love is the person who advertises saying "I am a programmer so I know how long this will take ...." and then says the job will take an experienced programmer only 1/2 hour to do. Well this one should clue you in that s/he is NOT a programmer and is trying to scam you into a low price. First, if they are good enough to know that it will take "x" number of hours to do it, then they won't tell you. They will wait and see what you come up with and decide if you are trying to inflate the hours. If they say some silly number like "5 minutes" then they are really clueless. IF they really were a programmer and IF the job was really going to take less than an hour, then it would have been faster for them to do it than to go to a website and write an ad and then screen the responses. They DON'T know what they are doing and are trying to intimidate you into a low price. These types will run up the time and if you try and raise the price they will keep on with "I KNOW how long it should have taken and you are OBVIOUSLY not as good as you said you are .... " Putting the blame on you so they can refuse to pay more.

I never told anybody this secret before

4 - The ultra clueless person. Seriously, I have received emails asking if I will clone E-Bay or PayPal or Amazon for $100 or less. Keeping it professional I decline these jobs. Inside I'm saying "are you smoking dope?" This is how I screen a lot of potential jobs. Look at the scope of the job and the top pay they are willing to give you. If it is a LOT of work for little money, then they obviously want to be working with offshore companies that charge $1/hr.

How to protect yourself? First, recognize the situations for what they are. Second of all, always have a contract, and 3rd, if in doubt at all, insist on an escrow account. BUT get that 50% upfront.