Thinking about hiring a writer, coder, web-designer or other professional through a site like Rent-A-Coder, Elance, or Guru? You are about to be ripped off and I can tell you why.

The first program I ever used Rent-A-Coder to create cost me $200 and I have made about $400,000.00 from sales in the past few years!!! How is that for turnover.

The second program I had written cost me $500 and I never made a penny because it did not work right, the programmer was incompetent.

Only later did I realize that there was an easy to spot difference in these two coders picture-perfect profiles that would indicate the difference between a competent and incompetent coder.

My name is Michael Ford and I am a software developer. I do not program myself, I hire people to do it for me. I have hired hundreds of coders through sites like these. I have seen all the tricks and scams that go with these sites too. If you do not know how they work, and how to hire a good coder, then you might as well pull up a chair in the bathroom and watch your money swirl down the toilet as you flush it away.

Maybe you have already hired a coder or writer and got ripped off. They conned you into approving code that was not working, or you felt pressured to accept something different than what you thought you were purchasing. Maybe you were scammed by a coder who told you he wanted royalties when he was not legally entitled to them. Perhaps you ran into one of the professional crooks who specialize in doing half the job for half the pay? Maybe your coder just stopped responding or your code was useless junk.

All of these happen and all have happened to me. But, you can’t give up on sites like Rent-A-Coder, Guru, and ELance. There are too many coders who are willing to work for chickenfeed and do a good job. Let’s face it, we are all here to make money. If you are a coder/writer or a buyer looking to hire a coder/writer, you are looking at these hire-someone-for-something sites because you want to make money. I know I like making money and the more I make, the more I like it. It would be wonderful if every job went smoothly and the coder delivered what they promised, but that is not how the real world works, at least that is what I thought. It turns out that you can avoid bad coders if you know what to look for and I am not talking about their past feedback. Feedback is easily faked on these sites. The problem is, how do you know which coder is good and which is not BEFORE you hire them?

The rating system is useless. Indian programmers have found out several ways to create fake ratings and they are constantly changing to new accounts when real buyers leave them bad ratings. You cannot trust the rating unless you know what to look for and how to spot fake feedback. There are hidden signs in the ratings and in the user profile that will tell you if the person placing a low ball bid on your project is a real coder or a crook trying to do half the job for full price.

I think you see that hiring a coder or writer is a tricky venture and if you pick wrong you may be scammed out of your money or even worse, you may waste months of your time while an incompetent programmer strings you along.

I got Scammed!!!!

I will admit it. I was scammed by a coder. I hired a coder for a $7,000.00 programming job contract after finding them through Rent-A-Coder.

Do you want to know something really scary? This same development firm is not only still working on RAC, RAC actually endorses them and posts the company on their main web page!!

I do not want to scare you away from using these sites. These sites are like any other on the internet, whether it is eBay, MySpace or whatever. There are good people and there are scammers. You use the sites because they can do something to help you, make you money, save you time, improve your life in some way. I actually want to encourage you to use these hire-someone-for-something sites but only if you are smart about it.

I do not want you to be a victim to these crooked coders. I want to help you find good coders, like I use, and use them to make your online business successful. I have compiled everything I learned from using Rent-A-Coder, ELance, and Guru for hundreds of projects and have more information on my website that will help you make your project successful.