Proofreading Jobs
Proofreading jobs are one way to really increase the bottom line of your freelance writing business every month. In fact, a few of the best jobs I have ever come across were proofreading projects. In this article I’d like to share a little bit about why these jobs are a virtual gold mine and how I went about getting them.
Why Proofreading Jobs are so Great
There are a couple of things that make proofreading preferable to almost every other job I have found on the Internet, and yes, that does include article writing! I will outline them briefly below and then expand on the bullets in the rest of the article.
- Proofreading jobs don’t take a lot of time to complete
- Proofreading jobs often pay at a competitive rate
- There are tons of proofreading opportunities
Taken together, these three factors mean that finding the right website to proofread for can mean a huge increase in your bottom line each month.
In and Out!
Proofreading is not like writing an article from scratch. There is no research, there is no need to turn a nice phrase with alliteration and some tongue in cheek humor. All you have to do is take a document that someone else has written and read it, correcting any spelling or grammar mistakes that you see.
It’s important to differentiate proofreading and editing, although sometimes the terms are interchangeable. Usually when you are talking proofreading, you’re talking line editing – just correcting spelling and grammar mistakes. Copy editing means looking at the whole piece and making it fit. In fact, I would go so far as to say that proofreading isn’t even really line editing, since all you are looking for is mistakes and not necessarily coherence within the paragraphs. So, if you can read, you can proofread!
Proofreading pay rates
The first time you come across a proofreading job, whether on a bid site or by having one offered to you, you might be inclined to scoff at the pay. I work for one company which pays me $1.50 for every piece I proofread. Not a lot, to be sure, particularly when compared to $20 to write an article.
Keep in mind, though, our in and out rule. While I do admit that I am looking for a little more than just mistakes in the pieces that the company sends me (there is some need to look for cohesion although it is pretty straightforward), it rarely takes more than a minute and a half to complete the proofreading of one of these articles; what that translates to is anywhere from $45 to $60 an hour – definitely one of my highest paying clients.
Lots of Opportunities!
A quick look around the Internet will show that proofreaders are, or should be, desperately wanted. It seems as though a good three quarters of the articles appearing on pages have significant errors (and believe me I know this site is not the exception).
There are a couple reasons for this. The first is that people just have tunnel vision when it comes to their own writing (I am firmly committed to this reasoning for any errors you see on this site!). The second is that most people just have no real clue how to spell, or hire people who can’t spell, and the result is poorly written pieces that really need cleaning up.
Getting in the Door
So how do you go about finding proofreading jobs? Well, I have secured some a couple of ways. The first, of course, is through bidding. I never bid too high for a proofreading job for the reasons I stated above; as long as I am just correcting spelling, it’s not going to take me too long.
Another method that has worked for me in the past is directly contacting a site when I find errors. I just fire off an email saying where I caught the mistake, the correction, and then explaining what it is I do for a living and how I think I can help their site to succeed. You have to be a bit careful, though, because sometimes people can take offence to this approach.
Of course, if you do succeed in landing proofreading jobs for a site, it can lead to even more opportunities. All of the sites I proofread for have also gone on to include article writing opportunities, most on a regular basis.
The site owners figure why spend money for the article in the first place, then spend more to fix it, when they can just pay a lump sum to have it done right in the first place? We’ll explore this a bit more in another article, but for now keep in mind that proofreading jobs can be a great way to get some fast cash in your freelance writing career!
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