Hi, I have been contacted by 2 customer to write articles for them... but how do I ensure that they do not run off with my money after receiveing the work??
You'll never know until you work with them a couple times. Why not just place a small order with them, see how they perform and start ordering more articles after you already establish a relationship? If a ghostwriter won't do one or two test articles with you so that you can establish a relationship just look for someone else. There is an abundance of ghostwriters around.
I'd try google'ing for their name or website followed by 'scam' or 'sucks'. If they screwed up someone else, I'm sure someone complained somewhere about them.
I agree with you. If I were you, I would do the same thing as he said. Just place a small amount of order at first and see the results and then decide for the next action.
do a little work and see how it goes, usually you have to take a chance and most will be fine. Scammers are pretty rare unless u deliver huge volume to them.
Have them pay half upfront and once you finish have them pay you the rest. If they dont pay they dont get their stuff.
No one is going to pay you up front for articles they haven't even seen. If they don't know how well you write, then they're not going to pay you. It's pretty standard to expect to be payed only upon delivery of acceptable articles. Acceptable should mean there are no spelling errors (notice I didn't say few, I said no errors), little if any grammatical errors, and proper keyword density. If your customers aren't asking for these things they are morons and you can probably get them to pay upfront. I wouldn't worry too much about getting scammed as it's not very common. Just accept one or two articles at a time, so your risk is low. Worry more about making sure your articles are up to par, so they'll want to pay you. Deliver quality products and your customers will be happy to send cash your way.
Agree one or two articles at a time. Develope a relationship with your customers for long term work and slowly allow them to increase the number of articles that they can order.