The post Pros & Cons of Traditional Freelance Proofreading + How to Deal + PREVIEW of Upcoming Freelance Platforms Series appeared first on Proofread Anywhere.
We know proofreading’s awesome, but it’s not all puppies and rainbows.
Let’s look at the honest pros and cons of working from home as a proofreader in the traditional sense.
We’re big on honesty here at Proofread Anywhere.
So yeah, we’re going to mention a few pros, but the focus here is actually on the cons: we want to make sure anyone who ventures into a freelance proofreading career knows exactly what they’re getting into — whether you choose to go the transcript proofreading route or some other route.
Pros of ALL Freelance Proofreading
Flexibility in your schedule. You have the flexibility to work when you want, whether you have another career, or freelance work is your main source of income. Many people do proofreading as a supplement to their main career and are able to complete proofreading projects during their time off.
You can invest as much or as little time as you like into getting projects/clients. There is a wide variety of work available, from quick document or website proofreads to proofreading daily or weekly blog posts. Some people prefer one-time projects because they don’t have to be committed long-term to something. Others prefer long-term projects, because they build up a consistent client base and have a more predictable work flow and income.
You can work from home, in your pajamas! That’s pretty hard to beat, if you ask us! You don’t have to go to a boring office job. As long as you have internet access, you can work from anywhere (like Ecuador, Kenya, the Philippines, Thailand, the UK, Mexico … we’ve got students all over the planet!).
Cons of Traditional Freelance Proofreading
Freelance proofreading can be very competitive. This means that you will be competing against thousands of other very talented proofreaders around the world. Depending on your niche, you may have to spend a lot of time (especially at the beginning) marketing and promoting your skills, applying for jobs, and checking job boards.
A career in “traditional” proofreading can take A LOT of time and effort. I’m talking years. Why? Most people in need of a “traditional” proofreader don’t make all that much money. College students, budding bloggers, and eBook writers are all trying to make money themselves, and many of them may skip out on professional proofreading altogether, or skimp on quality to save money … and we see the evidence of this every time we see errors that’ve slipped through the cracks! Traditional proofreading is not a money-maker, but if your heart is in it, you can earn some semblance of an income. Until you build up experience and have a portfolio of work, you might find yourself accepting very low-paying jobs (a lot of hourly jobs pay as little as $3/hour, and many fixed-price jobs pay $5 per 1,000+ word document, or less).
Initially, and maybe for a long time thereafter, you will spend quite a bit of time and energy applying for work without getting paid. The most successful freelancers apply for multiple jobs on a daily basis. You might also have to consider whether or not to invest in “credits” to apply for jobs. Most freelance sites allow a certain amount of applications per week or month, and once you fill the quota, you either have to wait for the time period to reset, or choose to purchase more credits. But bear in mind, again — this all depends on the niche you start working in. Potential clients in higher-paying niches often don’t even use freelance sites like Fiverr or craigslist to find their proofreaders.
Most general proofreading work is one-off jobs with very few repeat clients. BUT — if you can get plugged in with clients that come back again and again, it is possible to reduce the amount of time you spend looking for work and increase your free time.
The Hardest Part About Getting Started… is Getting Started!
What to Expect
At the beginning, you may get frustrated because you feel like you are applying to job after job with no success. Don’t give up! It is fairly common to have gaps in work in the freelance world. At times, you might have more work than you can comfortably handle, and sometimes you might find yourself with no work at all for a period of time.
When you first start out, it can be very overwhelming to try and find places to get work, and it might take a while before you even get your first job. If you’re dealing with some of the online platforms, it can be difficult to get work without any experience or client feedback on your profile.
You might ask, “Well, how on Earth do I get experience without any experience?” It is a common problem that you will come across in a lot of career fields, not just online proofreading. The term “freelance” or “digital nomad” gets thrown around a lot these days, and sounds like the perfect job: work from home (or wherever you want to be in the world) and have the freedom to make your own schedule. But as we’ve learned here on the blog, building the life you want takes effort.
Navigating the Various Outlets to Find Work
There are a lot of options for finding freelance work online. Not all of them are going to be highly profitable, and it can be tricky to figure out how to really make money (presumably, you are doing this to make money, right?) while competing with the millions of other freelancers who are all hoping to achieve the same goal.
So many questions come up when you first get started. For example: you may not know how to list your rate, or how much to bid on certain jobs. It can be helpful to search through job listings similar to what you would like to do. Check out the profiles of other people with skill sets similar to yours to help you nail down a solid rate.
Many fixed-price jobs will list what their budget is, but oftentimes, it can be vague when it’s on the lower end of the scale. Sometimes it will only say “Less than $500,” which doesn’t really help narrow it down for you. In a lot of cases, you can’t even see what other freelancers are bidding for work, either. You have to submit a bid, and hope that it meets the client’s expectation.
Deciding Which Jobs to Apply for
It can be tempting to apply for anything and everything at first, even if it is something you don’t really want to do, or are not particularly gifted at. The problem with this can be that you end up over-promising and under-delivering, which can lead to dissatisfied clients, poor feedback, etc. If you aren’t good at content writing or don’t know how to publish to Amazon, then you shouldn’t apply to jobs of that nature. You will end up spending tons of valuable time scrambling to either try and figure it out or failing miserably and not meeting your client’s expectations.
At times, there may not be a lot of jobs posted under your particular area of expertise. Then you might see an influx of jobs all at once. If you are diligently checking job boards multiple times a day, you can stay on top of new jobs as they come in and quickly apply. If you adjust your search terms slightly, you may also get different results. For example “English proofreading” and “proofreading and editing” will pull up different job listings. Sometimes the clients don’t list the right keywords you are looking for in the title and may not have a detailed description. You need to stay on top of the job boards in order to have the best chance to win a bid. You can often increase your chances of getting a job if you are one of the first applicants on a posting.
You should also check how long ago the job was posted. There are a lot of clients out there that don’t effectively manage their profile and will leave open job postings, even though they’ve hired a freelancer for it already. They might have also decided not to do it after all or found someone on a different website. If you’re using multiple platforms, they probably are too!
How Much Time to Spend Looking for Work
This is a flexible topic, for sure. If you only want to spend an hour a week looking for jobs, then you probably won’t see much progress. But if you spend an hour a day, then you greatly increase your odds of finding work. However, this all depends on how much time you have to spend looking for work. If you already have a full-time job, a family, busy kids, etc., then it might be difficult to find the time for looking at job boards. Try to carve out at least 30 minutes a day, whenever you can squeeze it in (where there’s a will, there’s a way). When you are taking the time to thoroughly read all the job listings and posting high quality applications, it can be fairly time consuming.
COMING SOON ON THE BLOG…
An INSIDE LOOK at the Popular Online Freelance Platforms
To help you better navigate the various outlets to find work as a freelance proofreader, we’re going to completely dissect the largest and most popular online freelancing platforms: the good, the bad, and the ugly.
Sites like Fiverr, Upwork, and Freelancer are full of qualified (and under-qualified) freelancers swarming like crocodiles.
The competition is steep, but the tips we’ve included in each section, along with the corresponding case studies for each platform, are designed to help you weigh your options and choose the best route for your needs.
First we’ll share the pros and cons to introduce you to each platform, then we’ll share a case study/interview with someone who’s spent a significant amount of time (>1 year) in that platform — so we can give you a deeper understanding of “life in the platform” as a freelance proofreader.
We actually paid freelancers on the featured platforms to write their honest opinions — positive and negative.
Don’t let the case studies scare you — we’re here to make it as easy as possible, and Proofread Anywhere offers a way around traditional proofreading if the traditional route isn’t for you.
YOUR TURN!
Have you personally dealt with proofreading work via online freelancing platforms? Share your experience(s) in the comments below!
The post Pros & Cons of Traditional Freelance Proofreading + How to Deal + PREVIEW of Upcoming Freelance Platforms Series appeared first on Proofread Anywhere.