re: "I have several jobs I accepted the assignment for and never heard from the initiator again. Anyone else have this experience?"
It is not the norm. But it happens.
The important thing is that you were proactive and cautious about these jobs, so that every job you accepted resulted in you getting paid. You know that having a contract with zero pay hurts your Job Success Score. Which is why you did the following:
a) For every fixed-price job, you did not accept the contract until you had enough information and the proper input files necessary for you to complete the job. You did not accept the job until you saw that the milestone task was completely funded. Although you never heard from the client again, you completed the task, submitted it, and were paid automatically.
b) For every hourly contract job, you did not accept the job until you had enough information abou the job to do at least ten minutes of work. After accepting the contract, you did at least ten minutes of work on the project. You did not hear back from the client, but that is okay because you were paid something for the contract. If you need to close the job, after a prolonged period of time not hearing from the client, there will be no negative impact to your JSS due to having a zero-pay job.
