Freelance editing jobs 2020 work from home no experience. How to earn money as an editor online.
Let me ask you this question
Are you the kind of person who can glance over a block of text and spot all the typos immediately? Are you a gramma police?
If your answer is “Yes” then editing jobs is perfect for you. I’m going to break it down step by step so you will know exactly what to do and thrive your editor career.
If you read at the very end you will learn how many editors make? How to get an editing job? What do clients look for? So, sit back relax and enjoy.
What does an editor do?
An editor’s job is working with writers to transform their work into the best possible version of itself. This can mean anything from rephrasing a couple of sentences to restructuring the entire piece.
The ultimately goal of the editor come down to three things:
- Refining the author’s voice;
- Achieving the piece’s purpose; and
- Ensuring that the audience understands the text itself.
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Let me give you an example
when the author public their book it is your job as a copy editor or line editor to evaluates the writing on a line-by-line basis: tweaking the prose to make it more effective, fixing spelling and grammar mistakes.
These are the three main types of literary editing. Academic editors, news and magazine editors, blog and media editors and others typically perform a combination of all three.
How much do editors make?
This depend on type of editor, the industry, the location how much someone willing to pay. As of 2020, the average editor in the U.S. makes around $65-70k/year. An editor who’s just starting out will make less, more in the range of $30-50k depending on the quality and quantity of projects they take on.
To set your salary or rate you need to compare with the standard industry price so you can refer yourself.
Here is the website call Editorial Freelancer Association and there a rate table you can check it out.
How to become an editor in 4 steps
1. Read as much as you can
The first thing you can do to prepare for an editing career is to read, read, read. Of course, if you’re interested in becoming an editor, you’re probably already a bookworm.
You should start reading more pieces in your intended specialty. So if you want to become a literary fiction editor, pore over the New York Times Best Seller list.
If you hope to become a lifestyle magazine editor, subscribe to Vogue and Town & Country so you can keep up with the latest voices, topics, and trends in that arena.
If you’re not sure what you want your specialty to be, that’s okay too! The main goal here is to sharpen your editorial senses — every book, article, and essay you read contributes to your understanding of what makes good writing or what is not good writing.
2. Earn your bachelor’s degree
This can become increasingly vital as the field has flooded with aspiring editors. In order to stand out as a skilled, qualified professional, you need to earn a bachelor’s degree — preferably in English, journalism, or communications.
The good news, it doesn’t have to be difficult, or even terribly expensive! You can complete your bachelor’s degree online or at a local college, and your current employer might even be willing to pay your tuition if you’ve been working there for a certain amount of time.
What a degree really proves is that you’re smart, hardworking, and dedicated: all qualities that people desire in their editors.
3. Take internships and low-paying jobs
You’ve been reading all you can and have earned the bachelor’s degree. Now it’s time to obtain your first bit of professional editing work internships and low-paying jobs.
As with getting your degree, this part is less about the work itself than it is about establishing yourself as an editor. One of the best ways to achieve this is by getting a job as an editorial assistant or landing an internship with a publisher or publication.
Editing internships are great because, though you won’t make much money, you’ll have a steady stream of work coming in that you can use to hone your skills and grow your portfolio.
If you can’t find or can’t afford to take such an internship, you can look for short-term gigs on freelancing sites like Upwork, Freelance.com, or Fiverr. I will show you where to find editor jobs later.
4. Find your niche as an editor
When you start working so much you’ll start to form a very clear idea of your own editing niche: where your natural skills lie and what you most enjoy doing. So after a few months of experience, you going to be a generalist but as your progress level up you will become a specialist.
The three main categories of literary editing I already mention in beginning of the video but now let’s break down the most common types of editors, so you can think about which path you might want to pursue.
Book Editor
This work can be on the full-length manuscripts of 50,000 words or more. This is the most intensive area of editing. However, book editing also offers a massive variety of projects to choose from fiction, nonfiction, and all the different genres they contain.
News and magazine editors
You are work on news, feature, and opinion pieces for a given publication, most of which clock in at around 1,000-2,000 words.
So each individual assignment is fairly easy to get through, but as a news or magazine editor, you’ll be expected to edit multiple articles each day — often going through multiple rounds of editing on each article.
Academic editors
You will work on research papers, theses, and dissertations. These can be anywhere from 20 to 200 pages, so depending on your specialty, you might be working on pieces that are basically manuscripts themselves.
Web editors
As a web editor, you’ll need to know how to apply search engine optimization (SEO) tactics, and how to publish your writing with tools like WordPress and other content management systems.
Line Editor
Here you’ll move into micro edits, or corrections to grammar and suggestions to strengthen and tighten copy.
Proofreader
This is the last line of defense between reader and error. You’ll catch errors in grammar and punctuation all that fun stuff. If you want to know more about freelance proofreading jobs then check it out.
How to get editing jobs?
Here’s are some of the website you might want to check it out
Problogger
If you’re a content editor with a particular liking for blogs, this place is made to provide a platform for your talent. ProBlogger is one of the best platforms for bloggers. You can find great writing and editing opportunities on this website.
MediaBistro
If you want online editing projects or want to polish your skills, this website is a good option to work with. Most job opportunities on this site are media-based.
ACES: The Society for Editing
For $75 annual membership to this organization for editors across industries including access to a job bank of high-quality jobs and projects as well as a listing in the ACES Editors for Hire directory.
Cambridge Proofreading Worldwide
This is an editing and proofreading service that focuses on: medical sciences, business and economics and engineering and physical sciences. Editors who work with this company can expect to work on dissertations, research proposals, admissions papers, resume.
I just name a few websites here but there are a lot of companies offer to hire editor so I already make a list download below:
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What do clients look for in freelance editors?
Many writers and business owners don’t know what editors do, so your first hurdle as a freelancer is often explaining the types of editing you offer and helping potential clients understand what they need. It’s usually more than the proofreading they think they’re hiring you for.
clients don’t often dig deeply into your experience for one-off projects. Like fiction authors they’re often bound by a budget and want to find affordable editing. Just don’t sell yourself short out of desperation for work.
Clients might want you to take an editing test or at least check out your resume and talk through your editing experience.
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