this post was submitted on 25 Feb 2025
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Freelancer platforms that have paying stuff do exist, but it requires effort to learn how to use them; and during the long learning curve, one is usually grossly underpaid and sometimes scammed and or cheated.
If in financial emergency it’s often better to not try this and try menial work outside industry. But one can find it as a decent resource stream after some trial and error which can take a year or more to learn
See, that's the issue on such sites. Posters want a whole (e.g. e-commerce) project done for $100 because, "it won't take long" and then challenge your quotes with "well, I can get someone in bum|f*ck|land to do it for $100...". A game I don't want to play.
And sticking around and building a rep for a year is difficult when such sites have lots of scammers and sock accounts actively challenging you to make you look bad and their other alt accounts look good.
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Things I learned the hard way:
Just want to add to this. Don't take job postings at face value. There are also employment scams to be wary of. Verify as much of their info as you can before you give any PII. Just because you found them on a legit site, doesn't mean that the job ad is real. The only thing stopping you from getting scammed is yourself. Stay vigilant.
This, what you said, is so important. In my years doing my own business, I have had literally hundreds of scammers, some smarter than me. Its best to just not even try to talk to people trying to contact you first in these platforms.
And many many scammers will post jobs, and one cannot tell by seeing if this is a new account. Some of my multi year assignments have been initiated by sketchy new accounts. At the same time existing accounts of clients usually have their own preferred coders. If you get to talk to an existing account with a history, check out the reviews and be wary. There may be a reason they are seeking out new blood.
I think its ok to go off site to talk to the new job candidates. Often, cannot have decent conversations in platform. And an in depth talk is free for all, and will often give clues in the first few minutes of talk.