Hi truthaboutfreelancing,
I'm not surprised you got ripped off. As soon as you load the site, you can tell it's a fraudulent, shady-ass template site with a proxied-domain. Here are a few hints that it's a scam:
1. Academia-research.com. Come on, the domain in itself should be blatantly obvious as to the fact it's a scam.
2. The site itself. It's a template site. The scam artist probably has 50-100 sites like it. Once they get enough heat (ie people e-mailing them from random e-mails and calling from randoms #'s) and getting yelled at it, they jump ship.
3. Speaking of which, the phone number is out of service. This is a dead giveaway. Furthermore, this site in particular didn't even bother with a toll-free number, and instead went with a NYC #, so even fewer people would call. Most fraudulent sites use #'s as a guise of legitimacy, and almost never answer their phones (and when they do, scam site operators have heavy accents, typically eastern European/Pakistani/Indian).
4. The domain is anonymized. While an anonymized domain is not necessarily an indicator of a fraudulent site-- there are plenty of legitimate sites in the business that for, let us say, professional reasons anonymize their domains-- more times than not scam sites are associated with anonymized domains.
5. Straight from the template site, "we pay from $5 up to $17 per page which none of other companies in the industry can afford". Heh. Let me repeat-- heh. Perhaps in Pakistan or the Philippines.
6. Not a single backlink. (google "site:academia-research.com"). Again, indicative of a throw-away site.
7. Pure 100% fraud sign, from "What we do": "Generally, our clientele request Masters or Doctoral-level writing." This is an outright lie. It's even too hilarious to address. If you believe this, well then, my friend, I have a bridge I'd like to sell you, :)
Again, if you're going to write for someone, make sure it's a legitimate site and not a template site. Second, make sure it's based in say Canada, the US, UK or a Commonwealth country, where the native language is English. Speak to the owner. You can tell if they're a native English speaker and straight forward, or a scam artist, and like I said before, 99% of the time you won't be able to reach them.
Again, I sort of feel sorry for you, but you were way, way too gullible. Next time, hedge your risks better.
