It’s all about trust.

The internet is full of random strangers. If you are looking to buy or sell anything, you need to develop a reputation before people will trust you with their money. So how do you do this over the internet?

In real life business, you can meet someone to get a sense of how trustworthy they are. If you want to buy something, you go to stores with a known reputation. For smaller stores you are not sure about, I recommend doing research at the Better Business Bureau.

Without a reputation, you are opening the door to fraud.

So how do you develop a reputation on the internet, which is a sea of anonymity. How can you get someone thousands of miles away to trust you with a transaction?

Well, it depends on what you are doing.

Most of the major online marketplaces (Ebay, Amazon sellers, Half.com, etc) have their own internal feedback systems which allow one to judge reputation. Lacking these internal systems, there are other options. Heatware is one such independent rating system which is popular with the tech heads. Otherwise, Paypal (which I discussed previously) is probably the best bet especially if you make the effort to become Paypal verified.

So then are you out of luck without a reputation? Not really. Like real life, it takes time to develop one.

• For forum marketplaces, be sure to post constructive messages in the forums so that people can see you are an upstanding citizen. Consider joining heatware to build a reputation.
• For major online marketplaces, start out with small value transactions. People don’t care as much about reputation if there is less money involved.
• For Craigslist, meet in person or talk on phone. Since there is no intrinsic reputation-meter, you will be scammed if you do anything over the internet.
• At some point, you will need a Paypal account

Building a reputation is key. If you are a seller, someone will pay you a premium if they sense you are reputable. If you are a buyer, many people won’t sell to you if they don’t trust you.
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Please comment below on any trust tools have you found on the internet.