Hi everybody!

I am a freelance writer like most of you. Writing is my bread and butter.

Many of you must be earning your livelihood by writing. The joy of writing on a particular subject after some research, adding creativity to it can be very satisfying. When the payment for writing arrives there is joy. The interest to write more sets in when the payment is prompt. God bless the tribe of people who make regular and prompt payment for the writing work they get done through us.

However there are a few contractors who promise you payment for your articles, but do the vanishing trick when the payment falls due. You know these contractors only on the Internet. So you send them repeated emails to make payments. They give silly reasons or avoid your mails completely. BEWARE OF SUCH SCAMS. You would be wasting your time writing for them. This is a friendly advice to all my fellow freelance writers who are new to this.

The best option is to write for small projects where the project gets completed in 3/4 days and payment falls due. If the payment is made as per agreement then one should continue writing for the same person. Similar such contacts should be established to maximize earnings. One should have more than one project to ensure steady inflow of writing assignments.

Coming back to the fraudsters, which is the main purpose of this article, we the writers, should post information regularly and let each other know which contractors are genuine and which are not. This is the best way to be in touch with reality where a generous sprinkling of fraudsters who feed on writers, exist.

For your information here is one of them - www.hyderabadnews.net. This site touts one Sarah Williams as the editor in chief. But in reality it's run by a fraud called M H Ahsan and there is no real Sarah Williams working as editor. M H Ahsan advertises in various job sites for writers( you may check www.freelancewriting.com
November, 2005 postings ) to pay $100 per article accpeted . He takes your articles, publishes in his site and orders you to write more articles,but evades payment. When you ask for payments he says it has been sent or it would be there in a week's time, but doesn't pay. He runs his site by paying for a few articles of reputed writers. He does this to attract revenue through ads on his site. But the majority of his articles are unpaid. He may reject your submission but later publish it under his name. Very unethical. I want all of you to know his modus operandi. More of the exploits of the fraudster can be read at www.cyd.liu.se/~kamva881/blogs/musings/2005/11/latest_updates_on_mh_ahsan_and.html

and www.mediabistro.com/bbs/cache/t23437_1.asp.

So my writer friends beware of such scamsters and becareful in your submission of articles.

Ideas on how to protect the interests of the writers are welcome. Thanks for reading this post.

Wordsman.