1) Before starting any type of work, review the project's whitepaper/website/blog posts.
==> If you are serious enough about wanting to create a high quality piece of work, you need to understand the content you are creating. This should be common sense, but you'd be surprised.
I wouldn't be surprised at all if most bounty hunters didn't read the whitepapers. I strongly suspect that most of them don't care about the project they're advertising for as long as they get paid, and that isn't going to change. It's all about the money for them, and honestly I can't blame them for not understanding any given project. Most projects aren't offering anything groundbreaking, and most are conceived as a mechanism by which only the developers can profit. Bounty hunters are lucky if they even get paid what they were promised.
I'd say maybe 10% of the bounty hunters read the whitepaper and actually understand the project. I can't speak on behalf on all of the bounty hunters on why, but my best guess is that they are only participating for the free tokens. However, they are only going to receive the bare minimum of tokens so I don't understand what the point is in that as that is not worth the effort in my mind. I'm very selective on what projects I participate for so I've had zero issues with not receiving any tokens or falling for scams.
You have been in bounty for 2 long years but why your account still in Jr. member? You must be a Full member or senior now.
Bounty hunters are notorious for their inability to earn the requisite merits to rank up further than jr. member, so that shouldn't surprise you. If your only interest in bitcointalk is doing bounties, chances are that you aren't making good posts and you're probably writing them all in the spammy sections where merits are rarely given. Plus it doesn't matter to the bounty what your rank is as long as you have some space in your signature for advertising. Junior member is the bare minimum, and that's basically all most bounty hunters are shooting for.
I was never a bounty hunter on here, only through Bounty0x.