Funny right?
Well, new writers are more likely to be scammed, even though many writers have been scammed by clients. A simple Google search will confirm this assertion.
In this article, I will be narrating my personal experience where a writer from iWriter contracted me via Freelancer.com and eventually scammed me of a $350 payment for a one-week round-the-clock task.
At the time of the supposed contract, I had no inkling he/she was a writer on iWriter. I will explain better as you read on.
Also in this article, I will note my mistakes and how you can avoid them so you will not be a victim of these heartless individuals that will take your work and never pay for it.
Check Out: How to Become a Freelance Writer in Nigeria
To start with, as a newbie, I registered on Freelancer.com and unluckily applied for a Copywriter job I found on the platform.
Note that I mentioned the scammer as James M. Green but his profile name on Freelancer.com is AliceGScoffin. Do not be confused, read on, as everything will become clearer soonest.
Red Flag No. 1
The client asked to contract outside Freelancer.com
As a freelancer, never entertain a contract outside the marketplace where you meet your prospective client. While there are exceptions to the rule, it is always safer.
My first mistake was agreeing to communicate and start the project outside Freelancer.com, an action the platform does not encourage too.
Red Flag No. 2
Name on Freelancer.com profile is different from Skype name
Remember that the name on the Freelancer.com profile is AliceGScoffin. The scammer has different name on Skype, James M. Green.
Red Flag No. 3
Payment scheduled for fortnight
As a freelance writer, you deserve to be paid every penny worth of your work. However, whenever an offer seems too good to be true, pause, evaluate, and ensure it is not from a scammer. Scammers usually use sweet offers to entice and blind you such that you do not see their plot on time.
Aside from this, they mandate you work on numerous articles before payment is sent together for all tasks completed. What happened to getting paid per article submitted? The answer is simple, they want to squeeze you as much as they can before you become aware of their scam.
Again, there is always an exception to this rule.
What happened next?
After accepting the terms of the contract, I started working and fortunately, the power supply in my area became worse. I was unable to complete some tasks in the first week, but despite this, I was able to submit up to 14 articles of about 14,500 words which at the rate of $0.027 per word agreement sums up to $391.5.
As a fresh graduate in an African country, earning $391.5 per week is not a bad deal, especially for a newbie freelance writer like me. So, you can understand my enthusiasm and the many plans I already have in my head on how to spend the funds, which are expected to be consecutive for the next six months at least.
However, I decided to stop because of the power challenge I was facing and requested payment for the work done so far.
After promising to send payment repeatedly since I requested it, the scammer, James M. Green, eventually stopped replying.
My revenge
I did advanced Google search of the articles I submitted and found some of them already published. Next, I reached out to the admin of the sites to tell them what transpired between I and the writer.
The articles were however published under different names. Some of the websites were helpful and reached out to the authors that submitted the article to them only to discover they had ordered the articles via iWriter.com.
Meanwhile, the almighty iWriter.com restricted African writers from registering on their platform; why? My guess is they want native English speakers only. Funnily, articles written by the so-called native writers were outsourced to African writers and they passed all their English test tool, including Grammarly and Copyscape. Anyway, there platform, their rule.
Back to my story, I was able to discover the writer had different accounts he/she used to source work on iWriter. The names I was able to track include: EliseWolf2018 and Mike0011.
I reported the case to iWriter, and was informed the account was banned, although there is no way to ascertain this.
Well, that was the only way I could deal with the scammer, even though he had already gotten paid by clients on iWriter and disappeared with my payment.
Since this occurrence, I have never been scammed by a client again, although many using a similar format have reached out ever since. One thing I also note about them is that most of them prefer operating using Freelancer.com as a cover to make themselves legit.
Why is Freelancer.com a haven for scammers targeting freelance writers?
