Freelance Editor

A freelance editor for hire is a conventional editor who does not work for an editing service. They are hired as a proofreader and grammar checker and to make sure the writing reads well to the audience. Editors, freelance or otherwise, are also needed to suggest a better title and/or subheads, paragraph organization that flows better or perhaps finding more appropriate choices of word.

As a freelancer, however, you are not usually required to assign jobs or decide on the topic or story you want your writers to work on. Instead, you find writers who already have written articles or theses, whose work still needs some polishing. So aside from having a very good command of English and the ability to refine paragraphs into readable articles, a freelance editor needs to understand the market he or she is competing in, thus the ability to find clients.

Finding clients is one of the struggles a freelance editor faces daily. If you produce good work consistently and network appropriately, clients may come your way on their own but do not count on that happening too soon, or better, at all. A freelancer needs to be proactively seeking clients as even long time, regular clients may one day decide to move on to other things, working on completely different fields.

As a freelance editor, you can decide whether to work online or offline, as these two fields offer quite different types of clients. Online, the clients are usually web site owners looking for a quick check on his or her site content. Online agencies sometimes link students or other amateur writers with freelance editors for a short term project, like editing term papers or feature articles done by expert with little training in writing.

Offline, you need to approach publishing houses, magazines or newspapers for a chance to do editing work. Seeing as most freelance editors also have their eyes on these establishments, it doesn’t hurt to try other places to build your portfolio in the meantime. Marketing departments of private, start up companies usually outsource editing jobs to a freelance editor, as do advertising agencies and public relation firms.

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