Defenestrated wrote:
I think Dungeon_Vic probably has the right take. Sorry. I would guess (FWIW) that it's hard to find decent employment as a proofreader, let alone a metal review proofreader specifically.
It's been a long time (about ten years) since I checked, but proofreading seemed to me like one of those positions that mostly offers irregular/freelance employment - and the more stable and secure positions probably attract a lot of attention from liberal arts and humanities grads struggling to find decent work that isn't completely unrelated to their studies. Sucks to say. Hopefully I'm wrong!
I agree with Dungeon_Vic that writing or proofreading for metal zines/blogs is not really going to make any money. Not sure that I ever thought it would to be honest. Should have been obvious.
However, you are incorrect about people not being able to make money as proofreaders and/or editors. Editors make more money than proofreaders cause it's the harder skill, and eventually I hope to get to the point of maybe being an editor. But as of this year the average salary for a proofreader is $56,000 and change per year. Certainly nothing spectacular, but enough to live a low-key lifestyle (DEPENDING ON WHERE YOU LIVE of course...) without a whole lot of extravagances, which I'm aware would be the case for me.
As a freelancer, a lot of it is about how you market yourself and how much attention you can attract to your website. I was just on the phone with my web developer today talking about the logistics.
And as a member of the Editorial Freelancer's Association (probably the biggest online editing org.) and from talking to the people on there it is almost unanimous that proofreading and editing are jobs with FAR more demand than there exists actual legit proofreaders/editors.
There's just SOOO much writing out there, whether online or offline, blogs, websites, articles of all kinds, fiction, non-fiction etc etc. that is HORRIBLY written and where no one ever even checks to make sure that the grammar or punctuation are correct. Some people don't care and put their stuff out there anyway, but there's enough people who want to have their writing actually look good that the demand is certainly there. The challenge comes in 1) having the necessary skills 2) being able to network properly and find those people who need your services.
And really, one of the major things that attracts me to freelancing is that you can make your own hours and work from anywhere there's an internet connection. I have other things I like to do and I don't like anyone telling me what hours I have to work.