Does anyone here do this and make any money off it? If so, is there a particular website you recommend? My initial investigations seem to indicate that the market is already saturated with people who will edit your work online for a fee. So, I'm not sure there's any profit to be made in this field.
yes, there are too many out there already, so it's very hard for a newcomer to break into the field... but i don't get why you're asking for recommended sites, if you're thinking of doing it yourself... i would never advise a new writer to pay an editing service, since so few of them are any good and it's just money down the drain, because even using the best available won't guarantee your work will ever get published... writers need to learn how to edit their own work...
There are a few, but you are now competing with countries like India where people can/will do the same work for 1/10th what you can afford to do it for. Global economy and all...
when even most of those whose native tongue is english can't write well, why would anyone pay someone who learned it as a second language to fix their writing work? it's not the same as IT stuff that smart folks can learn, no matter what language they speak... what editing sites do you know of that aren't in english-speaking countries, kyle?
It does happen though. Providers in India, who don't speak english as a first language, are on sites like Elance, and other freelance writing and editing bid sites, where they usually bid projects extremely low. People looking for services there will sometime specify that english must be a native language for them to consider a bid.
Yep, elance is full of non-english speakers. They drive bids lower and lower all the time. I stopped having any interest in the site after a while of dealing with it. Some people are fine with sub-par content I guess.
I still make some money on projects there from time to time, but I just don't bid on stuff that is easily undercut by non-english speakers. Definitely not as good a resource as it once was.
good grief!... i can see non-english speakers helping with IT stuff, but writing!!??? who'd be stupid enough to pay them to do it?
There is a difference between an non-english speaker and a non native english speaker. I have one Indian, and a Dane who help me with my writing Often find those with English as a second language tend to have a good technical base.
People who want to pay $20 to $50 max for a writing job that would cost them at least a few hundred dollars if they hired someone in the U.S.
Also, if we're talking high school or college students who don't know how to write a decent essay, I'm afraid I don't see why they shouldn't be considered dumb to start out with. I'm not happy with my own cynicism, but there's a four year college in my hometown, and I've had the opportunity to read essays from the upper-level English course there. It would probably make you cry, mammamaia -- or at least shake your head in disbelief. I mean, seriously, at what point did "senior at a four year college" stop meaning "person who can write four decent paragraphs in plain English"? But the two are no longer synonymous. I haven't run into this problem at MIT, of course, but some of the California State Universities have standards that wouldn't have satisfied some eighth-grade teachers forty years ago. Which saddens me.
