Marketing a Freelance Editing Business

Newer editors often express frustration to me about how long it takes to establish themselves in business.

Often they’re concerned because they don’t have a lot of spare time and they feel like they’re spinning their wheels. They want to do something big and bold to grab attention – if only they could figure out what that might be.

But small, persistent effort over a long period of time always beats a splashy one-off marketing attempt. You might get a little attention with your one-off but over the long term people will forget the splashy effort (which quickly disappears) and will pay attention to the person who shows up every day with something worthwhile to say.

Here’s a little illustrative story.

This past winter, I moved into my new apartment in Spain, and it turned out that my office is very cold in January. I was busy with some other things, but come March, I bought some yarn and started crocheting a shawl to wear in my office in the winter.

Well, things got busy again and I stopped crocheting. Then one day I realized that it was never going to get done in time for winter if I didn’t pay it some attention at least now and then.

So, I told myself I would just crochet one row each day. Just one row. Ten minutes tops. I could commit to ten minutes a day.

Last weekend, I finished the trim on the shawl and now it’s ready for winter.

For a long, long time it was just a shapeless mass of yarn and then suddenly it was a shawl.

And that’s what’s going to happen for you if you put in at least some marketing effort every day. One day, probably sooner than you think, you’ll look around and realize you’ve got clients, and work, and a business.