Typing and Transcription Services by Virtuadmin are undertaken by manual typing processes. No automatic speech recognition software or AI programs are used in the conversion of recorded speech to text or in the process of uneditable documents such as scanned documents and PDFs copy-typed into Word.
Virtu@dmin
Digital Audio Transcription & Typing Services
Freelancing
Small Businesses Outsource Typing & Transcription
Professional and affordable typing and transcription services in the Midlands, UK. Over 20 years of typing and transcribing experience to assist businesses, individuals and entrepreneurs in growing their business successfully.
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How to stay safe on freelance jobs websites in 2018
Whether you are sending a proposal or quote to a freelance job/task that meets your expert skills, or you’ve received a direct message from a person or business in relation to your skills and a possible long-term job opportunity, here are some tips, from experience, on how to stay safe and be sure that the job is actually genuine and not a scam in 2018 and beyond.
PeoplePerHour, the online freelance market, reckons self-employment in the UK and the US is currently growing at an average rate of more than 3 per cent. Based on official labour market statistics, PeoplePerHour predicts self-employment will grow at an annual rate of 3.5 per cent over the next five years in the UK and at 3.2 per cent in the US.
Work from home
One of the things that is making freelancing more popular and attractive to people is the ease of doing it, possibly from home like so many do as self-employed remote workers/freelancers/entrepreneurs. If you have an internet connection, familiar with the internet and a computer, there’ll always be something you can do online for money.
But for some people becoming self-employed is scary, especially if you are quitting your regular job to freelance. Maybe you had a temporary position or you’ve been made redundant and need to find a new regular income, as soon as possible, but freelancing is growing rapidly.
Freelancing
The decline in jobs opportunities in the marketplace, with proper part or full-time contracts and not 0-Hour contracts popular here in the UK, people are having to resort to freelancing to a certain extent.
Having now been freelancing as Virtuadmin for nearly 5 years now, there are some things, as I said, from experience that I would like to share with you and help you to stay safe when freelancing, offering your skills and services through freelancing websites.
There are many jobs sites out there online today, where you can offer your skills and expertise at a fraction of the cost of your competitors, to businesses or those requiring that skill as a one-off. This again is due to the advancement of the internet; the ease of connectivity to the internet from within your own home enables you to network, chatting with people about what it is you do. Then gain contracts, either short or long-term and build up your online reputation.
Freelancing Tips to Stay Safe
Here are some tips to protect yourself, and to be sure that the job is genuine and that you are going to get paid for your professional services.
- If you are messaged directly on a freelance platform from someone, for example claiming that you have been selected, after an in-depth profile review, for a live chat on any platform. This is another bit of experience gained this year by Virtuadmin. Approached on the Truelancer freelance jobs website, we were told exactly that. Our profile had been researched and approved for an interview and therefore Live Chat on Google Hangouts. You can read more about this in the post “Are Freelancers the new prey for money laundering scammers?”
- Any job description or task that has the job description posted as an attachment, rather than the description in the ‘Description’ or ‘Job description’ portion of the freelance vacancy, then this looks suspicious. Why? Well, if the job is genuine, why put it as an attachment, such as a PDF document for you to read what the job entails?
- Check out the buyer profile of your service. Have they completed projects on this particular freelancer site before? Is their feedback good from previous sellers that this buyer has worked with? This is another way to check that it isn’t just a fleeting scam by someone, that they and the job vacancy is genuine.
- Make sure that the platform you are work through enables the job funds to be paid for in advance, and then held securely until you and your client are both happy with the job provided to them and therefore your funds are released to your, within of course their terms and conditions. Had a job in our early freelancing days when someone needed a video transcription urgently. It had a strong accent but needed it to be done ASAP. Eager to earn good feedback we got on with the transcription, only to find the website in question, didn’t require the buyer of your service to pay for the task in advance. Therefore, he got a completely free transcription and the freelance website concerned did not intervene between buyer and us as the freelancers because they claimed the same as they cannot make a freelancer do a job they don’t want to do but thought they could or didn’t want to do, they can’t make a buyer pay for a job, even though I could prove that Virtuadmin had completed the work.
- If approached by someone to guest post on your website or blog, check them or their organisation they represent. Although this isn’t directly connected to using freelance job websites, as a freelancer you may have set-up a website or blog to get your services known in your particular niche area of expertise.
Why check them out? I had an instance a while back, where I received an email asking to put a personalised guest blog post around our niche on our website, virtuadmin.uk and in return could we link to them as the authours, obviously referencing them and therefore creating a backlink. I initially agreed, then after receiving the article, a few more emails back and forth and then just before I hit publish I researched them. They were only our biggest competitor in the virtual assistant/transcription outsourcing world. I have gone into more depth about this in a post back in May 2017, which you can read it here “Guest Posting and Link Building: My Warning“.
We are sharing these tips with you our fellow freelancers so that you do get paid for your hard work, and that you do not get scammed, or fall for jobs that seem entirely genuine, even as an attachment to a job. These tips are for you to take onboard, bear in mind, not just for 2018, but beyond and for always whilst you have a freelance career, whatever service you provide virtually, through freelance jobs websites.
Are freelancers the new prey for money laundering scammers?
When, a seemingly great opportunity comes your way, with nothing to lose you are going to follow it through aren’t you? This is what happened to us at Virtu@dmin; read on for all the details and how to NOT let it happen to you, a freelancer or not.
Freelancing as Virtu@dmin for a few years now, predominantly transcribing, I was very excited to receive a message on the freelance platform Truelancer, on the 4th October 2017. A person by the name of ‘Catlin Tracey’ claiming to be on the hiring board of a very well know global insurance company sent me a direct message me to inform me that my profile had been thoroughly reviewed and selected for an interview via Google Hangouts. (I have been invited to send a proposal for many jobs, but either they are for silly money or the job is awarded to someone else.)
I duly was on Hangouts at the time they wanted me to be, which was approximately 15-20 minutes later, of the mind I had nothing to lose. My partner said to me just end the conversation if they want you to pay out any money. In fact, after being interviewed on Hangouts, I was successful, earning $20 an hour whilst training, $35 an hour once the training was complete. I wasn’t to pay out any money, they were, in fact, to pay me, for software.
Having spent a lot of time researching this, the pay and type of questions they asked, there was nothing on Google (where I did my research) to suggest this was a potential money laundering scam.
I made notes, looked up the software I would be using and still nothing. (Although at the time of writing, Monday 13th November 2017, Truelancer have now deleted all the messages and a note to say, “Note: Kindly do not reply to this client. It was a Spam message”.) Shame they were not quick enough to do that back at the beginning of October when I was contacted. The profile had been active on there for approximately 3-4 months at the time of being approached.
Offer Letter
After being successful in my interview, I was sent an offer letter by email the next day, for what I thought was one of the biggest leading global insurance companies. I signed and emailed back to this guy, as requested.
Warning
So, if you are a freelancer and registered on freelancing platforms like Truelancer, and you get approached by a message directly, offering you this fantastic job opportunity, it is a money lanundering scam.
How do I know this? Well, as advised by the guy on Hangouts, (all of our conversations were on Hangouts, so another thing to watch out for) he said they would be paying money into my bank account for me to download software from a vendor they deal with directly.
He/they paid the money into the bank account as advised, but it all changed from downloading software to collecting office equipment and I had better have enough office space. The instructions were to withdraw a large sum IN CASH and pay into their vendor’s bank account. This is when alarm bells were rining loudly.
Upon advising him that we would have to order this sort of money he/they began to panic, and then requested we do it online, into a different bank account because this vendor was not accepting online payments at this time!
My partner (and partner of Virtu@dmin) and I knew then that this was indeed what appeared to be money laundering, and as I did a lot of research into the insurance company he ‘so-called’ represented, phone calls confirming they did have not that person working for them, the email addresses did not exist we have gone to the authorities.
Conclusion
As the jobs for life have virtually gone now, and in the UK having zero-hour contracts, and many part-time positions, that do not pay a living wage, more and more people are turning what skills they have to freelancing.
As a freelancer, getting work is hard, I/we have been freelancing enough years now to know how up and down it can be. Obviously, the more skills you have, the more freelance opportunities you can apply for.
Because of the insecurity in freelancing, the ‘not knowing’ of how much you will earn from one month to the next, I believe now that criminals and fraudsters are targeting freelancers to ‘clean’ their dirty criminal money. From one vendor not accepting online payments at the moment, to another bank account with all the details,including BIC and IBAN details, it became obvious what was going on. We simply do not want anyone, freelancer or not, to get stung by this new trick of theirs.
* For more information about money transfer scams please see this post from the Financial Conduct Authority.
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