My first JOB Online was a scam

If you want to become rich online then you have to work for yourself and not other people. You won't become the millionaire that you want to be working for other people unless it's a company like Google or Microsoft

As for freelancing, it's good money but be careful with who you trust.

Sorry to hear that happened. But can't you go to the people that run the freelance site and tell them about it? Surely they'll do something.

Well its good to know that you at least earned some money from him.Asking for upfront is best when you work on a fixed project in different freelancing marketplaces.I personally never been in such situations since I was aware of it.Its also suggested to check your client's feedback by other freelancers before taking a particular job.

You signed a contract, and he stiffed you $200? That is bad. Is he local, or is this international?

Great learning experience though. Surely, you got $200 worth of education from this.

Good luck! It takes a lot of experiences - good and bad - to be a good entrepreneur.

I've also experienced it several times back then when I was starting out, both being scammed by companies or by clients when I tried to offer services. But to have decent money online without being too much in front of your computer like having a J.O.B, being a freelance should be just a starting point to help you gather enough money to finally build your own business.

Sorry to hear that. I spent $200 on apiece of software called the instant cash plugin a couple years ago that my mentor at the time recommended to me(he also showed me his traffic stats and the amount of sales he was making from using the software).

The software was supposed to send lots traffic to any link I want. At the time I didn't know what bots were and I later found out after getting thousands of hits and no sales to my affiliate link, that all the hits were from bots.

I didn't understand that the hits were suppose to help my websites and videos rank in the search engines(he was making all those sales because he was sending hits to his youtube videos and they were skyrocketing to the top of the search engines), instead I sent the traffic to an affiliate link. My "mentor" just told me to buy the product under him and send traffic to my affiliate link and I would make sales". I decided that I would never spend that kind of money on anything ever again until I figured out how money was really made online and I actually started making a consistent income online.

Newbie mistake.

@OP What did you learn? What do you do differently NOW, as opposed to THEN?

I freelanced for quite a few years. I learned that you never start a project without a deposit and you never deliver a project without full payment first.

Well, I would like to know the name of the site where you were signed the contract. That site must have some sort of option to report about that employer. May be you will not be able to get the amount but others will become alert about that employer. Also, it will work as a lesson for you.

I got scammed on seo for 50000 twitter followers then i just deleted all my followers so i didnt get burned that bad

I have an offline client who i am still confused if he is legit or not, who claims to have billion dollar companies that need an online presence, but then tries to sell me a networking marketing product.....

No, but when I was 16 I got hustled in Puerto Rico playing a tile game that was rigged to relieve unsuspecting tourists of their money. Lost 2/3 of my holiday spending money and at the time the lesson was so painful I had a hard time enjoying any of the holiday after that. When you're an easy 'mark' and you've been scammed the lesson is priceless. I saw one guy challenge another that was doing the same thing but with carved out potatoes and a pea (it was lower stakes). The 'hustler' was an old guy who looked harmless enough until the loser challenged him at which point he got out a knife and thrust it at him repeatedly. His wife saved his life by dragging him away.

You live and learn

Half up front, always. I've learned the hard way too.

WHen you are new to anything expect some bad things to happen and keep it as a learning experiece so that you can take care from next time. You should be more careful from the next time when you deal with someone online on forum. Try to refer reviews of them on forum or blog , try searching on internet with their name too.

I have done hundreds of thousands of dollars in freelance work. Always use either a service (such as Elance or oDesk) or always ask for 50% up front. 50% is fair as you are both assuming equal risk then. As a rule of thumb though keep in mind that what happened to you is the exception and not the rule. I probably did 500 jobs in 5 years and I can count on 1 hand the number of times I have been cheated. Dont let this bring you down and dont give up on freelance work. It is a very viable means of earning a living.

I was burned recently too. Consider it a lesson learned.

Surprisingly, the majority nowadays is like that ... you know, benefit from the crisis, using it as an excuse and so on ... most people want their job done with less than the minimum ... i don't know ways to eliminate that rather than checking their background first

If you are a free lancer then go thru a service. They will use escrow. Yeah, this will keep you safe and secure. Most of us have similar stories and I like to meet clients in person. Get a feel for who you are working with and what you are working on. Good luck collecting money over seas.

Its a good lesson for you. There are a lot of online scams and you have to be aware of them or else you are gonna lose your money pretty fast.

One of my first writing jobs was from a guy in the Philippines. He wanted me to do IMMENSE research for an article with 1,000-2,000 words. It wasn't even an article; it was like finding different restaurants, top hotspots, and other places with their addresses, hone numbers, and EVERYTHING. It was so stressful, I couldn't even finish half of it.

You know how much I was supposed to get......

$4 measly dollars for nearly 4-6 hours of work. Heck no. I cancelled it once I reached the 4 hour mark.

Never work before you get paid

Usually they have to escrow funds on freelancing sites and you can request arbitration if they don't pay. Freelancing sites like freelancer.com are pretty good.

It's quite common buddy.

Let it go and start focusing on your own projects instead of working for others

Online scamming is very common. You should be able to determine it the very first time you talked. If that someone is very aggressive in giving tasks, then you should be worried about that. Next time, weigh things first.

this still happens, and it is really annoying. but as far as you step into IM you have to accept that it may be happening to you, cause scammers are making more money than us.

Yes always charge enough upfront so if you never get
paid another cent you're happy doing the work.

That way you can't get burnt.

If they haven't paid you, you don't start doing work for
them.

It's really simple.

Andrew Cavanagh

I bought, 6 years ago, a very low quality clickbank product called "six figure yearly income". Very newbie-segmented title, right? Yes, the content was very bad. The idea is to use adwords to drive clicks with just simple numbers game that we'll get our ad spending back by promoting affiliate programs.

Lol.... "How did I buy that ebook !?" I can now ask myself.