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Permalink Reply by Kimberly Fujioka on December 3, 2009 at 6:03pm

Vanitha: Hi ! I am a professional writer/editor and started my own business in 2003. I learned a lot in the first few years that I am not able to go into here. It's just too much info.--like designing the website, updating it, social networking to drive traffic to the website, registering as a small business etc. However, I would say that the best advertising is word-of-mouth and a good website, that is, one where customers can navigate well and get their questions answered about: price, services, types of editing, the credentials of the editor/ or recommendations from past customers. I can give you my website to look at but it isn't the best out there, on the web. (I need to improve on a few aspects. For example, my PDF upload pages are malfunctioning, so I need to talk to the hosting company about that.) Having said that, I do have plenty of customers from all over the world.(By the way, one thing I learned several years ago is that when there is political trouble in an area of the world, the banking industry in the U.S. responds with economic sanctions; and as a result, you can't get your payment from Paypal or any other credit card company. Woops ! So when a customer responds from one of those regions, I have to get creative about payment. Right now, Pakistan is one of those countries.) I have a rather high ranking on Google. (I do not pay for advertising at all. I could talk about that a lot because, in the past, the few places I advertised where it seemed to be a "perfect match" to advertise for the type of customer I wanted, it did not produce any customers; and I only lost money from paying for the advertising. Ugh ! )
If I were pressed to answer the main reason I have good customers, I would say I do good work; and I communicate with the customers on a regular basis. I give them my time. Wow ! That's a novel idea.(You would not believe how inattentive the competitors are in this field of editing. I don't feel any pressure from competitors because once someone uses me then never leave. And I have heard their stories of the other big editing companies.)
When I first started my business I was teaching at UC Davis; then I transferred to UC Berkeley. Now I live in Honolulu. I had a great place to do free advertising when I taught at a university. I posted on university websites; and I put professional signs I bought at Vistaprint around at the university departments, in an attempt to attract professors or grad. students, not undergrads. (My niche is academic writing, by the way.) I also gave presentations about writing a good research paper for publication. I handed out my ads there. In addition, whenever I had the chance to discuss with other instructors or professors at the university, I gave them my business card. (I also taught at several universities in Japan; and I contacted those people I knew there after I started my business.)
In addition to all of that, whenever I wrote articles and published them, I included my website in my bio. even if it was only one sentence long, which was quite often. I contributed to a book, To Japan With Love: A Travel Guide for the Connoisseur that was recently released (ThingsAsianPress) where I also write about my business in the bio. page.
Anyways, I hope I've given you some ideas. My website is: http://www.englishwritinghelp.com
Kim Fujioka
Good Luck !

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Permalink Reply by Carolyn Haley on January 22, 2010 at 3:23pm

Join the Copyediting-L and Freelance groups.

Copyediting-L offers a place for freelancers to list their services (no commercial ads allowed directly on list, but the content and water-cooler opportunities are worth it for anyone in this line of work).

I'm not sure if Freelance allows self-promotion, but like Copyediting it periodically posts job opps.

www.copyediting-l.info
http://community.lsoft.com/archives/FREELANCE.html

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