Smart People Impress Me

by 14 replies
18
I had a Warrior contact me about some proofreading services. A few months ago, I put out some feelers about fixing spelling and grammar for those whose first language wasn't English.

I was advised not to do it, because it was a lot of work and the pay would be far too low. I did it anyway a few times, and it was indeed a lot of work and the pay was low. So I stopped doing it.

But in a moment of weakness, because this Warrior asked nicely, I agreed to provide this service at a specific per-page cost.

So I get the document, and my immediate reaction was that this report was not going to do well because it was such a big wall of text. But I did my job, submitted the finished work with invoice, and moved on.

I just got a PM from this Warrior about what a great job I did. And then he mentioned something that truly impressed me.

He said now all he had to do was put the formatting and screenshots back in.

It doesn't take a genius to figure out that if you use narrow margins with a small font and yank all the screenshots - your page count goes down!

Smart.

I'm betting that when all that goes back in, his page count will double. With a few simple tweaks to his report, he chopped the proofreading invoice in half.

And that's how you run a successful business.
#main internet marketing discussion forum #impress #people #smart
  • I remember reading somewhere that Kate Anderson does something similar whenever she outsources the creation of an ebook for one of the sites she sells, paying by the page and specifying a small font size, and then reformatting the work afterwards using a larger one.

    Like you say, smart.
  • Yup!!!

    How you run a successful business is create a win-win because I do not think you would do it again, so he loses out
  • ah come on...don't you count the words and charge per word?
    • [ 1 ] Thanks
    • [2] replies
    • I'm guessing he will next time LOL
    • For less than one page, yeah.

      The proofreading thing is really not something I want to keep doing on any sort of ongoing basis. In fact, I usually just do it for friends in return for a free copy of the report, and the idea of selling the service was just something I played around with doing. I thought maybe it would be faster and easier, but it's really not.
      • [2] replies
  • Whether I'm proofreading or writing I always ask them how many words they are expecting. Too many people ask for fonts and no margins and hope to get 500+ words on a page to cut their costs. We base our pages on the industry standard which is 250 words per page.

    Many of the marketers who reduce the font size to pay less, then increase the font size to say the book is bigger. I have seen books which claim to be 50+ pages but the font is 20 pitch and doubled spaced.
    • [ 1 ] Thanks
  • Not so smart to tell you about it, though.

    As far as proofreading goes, I was lucky enough to get a really good job. It was a university term paper from someone who used English as a second language. However, the term paper had to be written in English. My first thought was this is not going to be easy. But, her English was pretty good, just a few basic errors of verb/subject agreement, tenses, and misspellings.

    The cool part was I learned about an interesting topic while doing the job.

    The deal was $275 for about 30 pages, but I got a $75 surprise bonus for getting it back to her quickly. And the whole process was thoroughly enjoyable. Too bad all proofreading jobs couldn't be like that.

    All the best,
    Michael
  • Kay's post just reminded me of another method I've used...

    Asking for a copy of the work to be proofread, and then giving a price quote for the job. This way, if you get someone who barely has a grasp of English (this includes native speakers, too) you can set a higher price.

    All the best,
    Michael
    • [ 1 ] Thanks
Join the discussion

Next Topics on Trending Feed

  • 18

    Smart People Impress Me

    I had a Warrior contact me about some proofreading services. A few months ago, I put out some feelers about fixing spelling and grammar for those whose first language wasn't English. I was advised not to do it, because it was a lot of work and the pay would be far too low. I did it anyway a few times, and it was indeed a lot of work and the pay was low. So I stopped doing it.