Too good to be true?

[eef1d005]

"Hello, We're in need of an active freelancers who can help the company retype 100 pages screenshot pdf to Microsoft Word Documents and transcribing into PDF files...... Hope to get interested proposal soon"

I'm relatively new to the platform still, been browsing for a few weeks now anyways. 
This is a fixed price terms posting, I see there's a lot of skepticism towards that subject though. 
It is seemingly generous, I suppose like an average month's salary. But it could very well be a lot of work dependant on what the 100 pages actually consist of imo.
I jumped right into whilst I'm submitting a proposal every here and there for the other lower end tasks to get started(I haven't landed my first project yet) But I'm not necessarily actively seeking either, more just casually exploring, studying, learning, as we speak over the weeks. 

Like any platform, of any subject, I'm sure scammers are out here too. 

Should I withdraw the proposal and shouldn't have waste my time in the first place? Take the loss on the connects and move on?

Some additional context: the client payment method is verified, it is the first and only post available from the client, a new account member since 03/25/2023, located in the US, it is a rather ill descriptive posting for my taste, but it's a simple requirement am I just expecting too much information on the subject? I've definitely seen some other simple and similar jobs that said a lot more in the details, the posting was made ~3 hours ago(my current time is 23:46) already has 20-50 proposals on the offer.

Naturally I see a few red flags in here, but no it's not all red flags imo. But I'm open to hearing the opinion of the active community outside of all the past threads I've came across in the community section prior to my post. 

Thanks in advance y'all.

Excuse my lacking grammar and conciseness. I don't feel the immediate need to be as professional right here lol. 

[fed5dc4f]

Drop inbox

[312473fd]

Nayab T,

Can u help

[yofazza · Accepted solution]

Too good to be true

---

It's a common scam, see here for more.

And what's with the first 2 all of the responses above?

Edit: Some "long copy-pasted proposals" has gone from this thread (must be the mods).

[eef1d005]

Radia,

Cool, I kinda suspected such. Not fully, but a little forsure. I'll review your link as well in case it's once I haven't seen thanks. 

& Seriously though? The spam is real... Like they didn't even read the post... effin bots... 
3 of the 4 are new "freelancers" create yesterday/ today... 

[yofazza]

It is interesting about the effin bots part.

They're either:

• Trolls
• Bad ESL that jumps to conclusions after seeing "We're in need of an active freelancers"
• Bots (not sure though, why would they do it here in the forum?)

Anyways, this confirms what clients saw after posting a job. Reading 10 proposals will scare them off.

Job posts with no interviews or hires, explained.

[eef1d005]

Definitely, it makes a whole lot of sense in these situations. 

It is absolutely apalling to me, honestly how whether, trolls, people with bad ESL, or bots, that they literally manage to scour into the depths of every crevice of the internet. But not even the least bit surprising to me nowadays. Such is the case with scammers, also not even surprising to me anymore. I encounter them everywhere, social media just to name one, but even if some of my other ventures where I operate with less of a commmunity basis then Upwork for example, but not quite independently.  "Everyone sees the operations one is engaging in online, and decides to wants to give in their two cents in the most bs, absurdly ill planned "formulas" I've ever read. To which, I probably should've been expecting such even here, tbh.

That is a good catch tho, I read over the brief description for that posting so rapidly I didn't even notice the grammatical oxymoron "We're in need of an active freelancers"

Which in itself contributes to the red flags list lol. 

On a side note, that's another reason I feed most of if not at all my larger entries, where professionalism is key through grammar checks in MS Office before proceeding, just cause I know sometimes these things happen and I will make a mistake and not notice while click clacking away at my desk 😆

Also, sure **bleep** I had a cookie cut copy paste to reach out to a hiring manager via telegram not too long ago hit my inbox regarding my proposal, as I haven't withdrawn it yet. Ouch, that was a little much, 6 connects too, but lesson learned. I know it isn't really much. I just haven't invested into a subscription, or any additional connects until of course I've test the waters and found a reliant client base first. 
Thanks for your time again! 

[eef1d005]

Also, sure **bleep**

That's awesome, I actually admire that it censored me. I don't see that very frequently. 

[boris_stojanov]

Am I reading this right or are the comments full of "People that didn't even read what the question was?"

Michael S
-Yes Michael, unfortunatelly it's been a hell of a ride in the past year, seems Upwork can't or wont control this (Don't get me wrong, Upwork is great but it's going to lets say really hard times atm)
If you start searching for jobs it's like 70% scam and the rest are legit. 
Basically you would need to go trhough the grinder to build up a number of employeers who would be coming back to you over and over. 

[eef1d005]

Yes sir indeed you are reading that right, as I was saying earlier to Radia it's appalling. Like my gut instinct with those replies always instantly goes "bots" though yes he point out to me other possibilites, trolls, bad english speakers, etc. Still seems they are truly in every crevice of the internet... 
It's absurd, but what can we do?

Yes, sadly I've also read plenty of speculation going around that Upwork "won't" do much or anything at all to control it, as well as others saying that emails and publications have been released or sent out directly to users regarding the actions being taken toward the issue. All I know is I probably definitely haven't been on the platform long enough to have received any of those emails etc. I could be wrong about the time frame. But I joined this year. 

It would be great to know if they are taking action towards it, while understanding they might not be able to catch it all, and our diligence of reporting helps them out in some way. 

I do hope there is some of course of action in place, I have nothing bad to say about Upwork for having scams on it, at least not any more then I have to say about facebook, instagram, whatever. Because the same concept applies, at the end of the day we still block/ report profiles and suspicious users there as well. 

But I do in fact applaud what Upwork is doing, and the potential the platform has, minus the 70% scams part. 
But it's opening so many doors for some side hustles I've dabbled in from time to time using my experience but never actually took too seriously, it's difficult from times to get in front of the right audience on a small scale through word of mouth and referrals, without massive advertising on various social medias or whatever. 

I'm sure it's doing a lot of beneficial good for a lot of people.

Naturally of course, my end goal from the sign up here is to have an established list of satisfied clients returning to me with projects large and small eventually. I wouldn't call passive income my dream, I still like to work in a sense. But money coming to me, instead of me chasing it sounds nice. 

Thank you for reaching out!