Before I part with any of my money I always check out any potential business partner!  If you have found a site online and you have no information on them, apart from what is on their website, just how do you begin to know if the people behind the website are legitimate?  There are millions of scammers with one thing on their minds, your job is to do everything you can to find out who these people are.

Checking Them Out

1)  There should be full contact details on the website.  That means a contact name, full address and very important, telephone number.  Call the number and speak to someone.  Do it more than once!

2)  Do a WHOIS Search on the website.  Simply type in the URL of the website and you may get all the information you need to make a decision who is behind the site.  Does the information on the WHOIS search match who they say they are?  If it doesn’t you may well be dealing with a scammer who has faked contact details.

WHOIS will also allow you to check how long the site has been registered.  If it is only a few months, less than a year, then it could be a scammer who puts up a site very quickly to hit and run with your money.

You should also be aware that you can very easily opt to have your personal details blocked when your buy and register a domain.  This is a legitimate practice that honest business people often do, I routinely do it to protect my personal information.  For the scammer who intends to hit and run though, it can be a great cover as to their true identity. You have to weigh this, and any other information you gather, to see what the whole picture looks like.

3)  Get in your car or get on a plane and physically check out any potential business partner, do it!  Look around their premises, talk to local people, local Chambers of Commerce.  If they are legitimate, they won’t mind.

4)  Know your business!  You must do your homework on the business you  are looking to enter and you must be able to have in depth technical discussions with any potential business partner.  If they don’t know the jargon or have the technical knowledge about the business, be very careful.

5)  See if they will accepet Escrow  Legitmate companies and websites have nothing to fear with Escrow.

There are more checks you could do, but these are some to get you started.

This may all seem a little over the top, but it is far better to spend some time doing in depth detective work on a potential business partner/website than it is to send money blindly and to lose it.

 

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