BEWARE
Relax, JackRabbit.
@xerces the reason many people are hesitant to do trades with newcomers is that the demand for bitcoins has dredged up a massive number of scammers, and some people have been burned pretty bad. Here are ways to improve your trustability:
First, use as many existing methods and connections as possible to establish who you are. Do you work at a respectable company, know someone who's already trusted in the BitCoin community, etc? That will help a lot.
Second, offer to conduct the trade through
ClearCoin, which is an escrow service that will hold the bitcoins until the received payment has been verified. If you are wanting to use a payment method that has a long chargeback period, such as PayPal (chargebacks for up to 90 days), you will unfortunately have to wait that long to receive your bitcoins. Alternatively, be willing to use some sort of payment method that isn't as vulnerable to chargebacks.
Once you have conducted a few trades and established yourself as a trustworthy person, you will find it much easier to do trades. The community is pretty good--they're just trying not to get scammed. Hope this helped!
