A little about your experiences making money online

So I recently created upwork.com and freelancer.com accounts and started bidding on many projects until I finally got an offer, only thing is I'm a little skeptical about the employer, if they'll pay me or not, and it's a very complex task, like it's not something that I can just do it to try it and well if they don't pay me it's not much of a lost.

So I wanted to know what's your experience with this type of things?

Someone just posted a thread warning about upwork https://www.blackhatworld.com/seo/dont-use-upwork.887204/
Making money online is getting tougher and tougher everyday