Potentional commission on Instagram or is it a scam?

[ButterflyEmpress]

Typical "hello are your commissions open", no question mark, just blunt

This scam is so demoralizing. I pretty much ignore any DM asking for commissions. It forces people to think "No real person would ever want to buy anything from me."

On a lighter note I had a scammer ask me to draw 3 portraits of the same guy in slightly different poses and said the bg can be "water rock or cloud". The guy in the ref was wearing a suit so I don't know why he'd be anywhere near "water rock or cloud". He didn't even do the $300 thing. He dipped after I gave my prices.

Scam Screenshot

Yes I know my prices are criminally low. I'm working on updating them

[RedLenai]

I honestly don't consider it demoralizing, maybe I'm way to used to have been several years having people coming to me asking for free art or stupidly cheap prices (That compared to you, $30 is still a decent price, I have commissions starting at the price of $5).

If you think that no real person would ever want to buy anything from you, then you need to find out why there is no demand, I made a post expanding on those reasons or what to do to maybe get more jobs on the way. Sadly is neither easy and this is honestly... what I do.

Honestly... at this point, scammers are my punching bags and I mostly mock them for not having real jobs and having the typical white people profile pictures inside cars and wearing sunglasses, besides the terrible attempt at the scam, they lack creativity and only know how to copypaste stuff.

[ButterflyEmpress]

Honestly it's probably due to myself being in a bit of a rut lately. Hopefully I can break out of soon.

Also, I don't know if you already know this, be careful when mocking scammers. You could accidentally teach them to be better at scamming

[sushy00]

I have been approached for commissions before. Just never on Instagram. I always charge payment upfront so I am not afraid of that either. If this continues I probably will say I will send them an invoice, but asking twice if I use PayPal in this manner seems so suspicious.

Here is a part of the conversation... Like it is possible this person doesn't know English very well, but... so suspicious.

Edit: sorry I have trouble posting this image in a normal size.

[ButterflyEmpress]

Yeah it's definitely bogus. Especially since they say you're art is very beautiful, but asked for examples. I think the asking about PayPal is copy pasted from a script

[RedLenai]

Actually... It is a scam, I would recommend you not to waste your time with them. The quickest way to get rid of them and notice they are scammers is by either having a Google form or Ko-Fi Commission page and telling them

"Hello there, feel free to make your request in the following link" and the link to my Ko-Fi Commission page

The usually never respond, and those that do it totally ignore the link or greeting and go straight to their scripted wannabe attempt of a scam.
As well, the fact that they talk about inches when you're strictly a digital artist is also a big call out, most of the time genuine clients as in pixels or simply go "I want it be enough for a pfp but also to use in post"

And I'll tell you the following: They DO know english, they just pretend to play dumb or have very ambiguous phrasing to pretend to look like a an actual person typing through. Usually they show how well they write when it's about insulting you once they figured out you've been playing with them or just straight up telling them their scam doesn't work and to get a real job. Lmao

I would recommend you @sushy00 to read my previous reply slowly so you can properly understand how the scam works and how to see the red flags before hand more easily. Because to me this was obvious from the very first message.

[RedLenai]

Binance is an existing platform for cryptocurrency, but it's usually one of the few that are actually trustworthy but of course that is if you already know your ways around that or get paid by a company (which I've seen a lot do to avoid fees and taxes or be able to pay better to countries with a different currency)

The thing is when it comes to your commissions, if a person offers you to pay with something outside of what you offer in your service then is highly a scam. Mostly because they'll offer you an invite link, from where you log in, or simply is to create new accounts that later they hack or you even provide them with the password for, wahtever shady business or thing they convinced you but usually is associated with money laundering, a typical thing that happened with Patreon a few years ago.
There was a wave of people offering you to support you a certain amount by pretending to be an association supporting a movement/charity and such.

[Bella_Artz]

Thanks for the info. I'll turn them down directly as I have other things to deal with than waste time for what could be a potential draw back on my end. A bit bummed though, I was so excited for my first commission.