Could you be considered a good example, building up a reputation from scratch
based on this topic?
As I've already stated, deceiving is always there, noone can escape from this not even in physical business. I know plenty of people that have gone to bankrupt for deceiving issues, including my uncle. Don't know why internet feels so special
The last company I built, burned almost $300K in a huge failure, overpromising a service I could not ultimately manage to deliver. Maybe for the investors it was a scam. But none claimed to me a single penny because they knew the risks.
This is how money exactly works. I understand that when we work on a daily basis, money is all we have, so as many have stated, due dilligences and milestones are the only protection measures. For example, for Sartre $30K service he was marketing, if you suspect of a real scam, one could have asked him to pay in $5K blocks, for example per 5K/monthly visits milestone instead of $30K upfront. If he did not agree with this, then you were always free to choose an alternative, or just put all the money in the roulette. If you had $300K in your bank and you were looking for some extra profits then maybe losing those $30K on that investment wasn't a real deal. But if you expected this to be your sole income source with not even having those $30K and have it to lend it from a bank, then you could be in real problems.
Same applies for anything in life.
So basically if you ask a guy, to put you a link in NYT for $3K then tell him that you are going to pay maybe 30% upfront and 70% on publish. If he tells you that he has to pay NYT upfront, then you know the risks (probably I would stay go 50%/50% or not publish at all or try to do it more direct with the publisher).
But if you pay the $3K and then get scammed (even by a very old and reputed account), and $3K was all you had for linkbuilding... I think you did things wrong from the beginning, OR you had too much spare money that your time for management wasn't worth those $3K in loses for the risk of losing.
