Kicking around a small business idea. Anything to watch out for?

“Literary services” makes me think of editing. The Editorial Freelancers Association is an excellent resource for answering many questions. I lived many years as a freelance editor and proofreader and still do a bit of it.

The EFA offers help in many different areas. One of the best is membership enables you to join their group health insurance plans, if you live near one of the chapter sites.

One thing I learned is that proper bookkeeping is of the utmost importance. It was easy to forget who I’d done a job for, whether or not I’d invoiced them, when or if they’d paid, or a sundry other points. Also, the IRS will be very interested in the amount you get paid.

In my own experience, I steered clear of offering to edit college papers and theses, because there was a fine line between my work and the student’s work. Simple proofreading is another story.

Having said that, students often need a lot of help that universities don’t offer. The need is there, and someone has to fill it.

@Nullo Here is a freelance editing site.

The biggest issue I see is your target market is typically broke. Why not link up with a web developer and proofread their website copy? You have the advantage of reaching a much broader market for your services and you could find web developers all over the country. Another similar line of work is writing the help documentation for applications. Programmers hate doing this because it takes time away from coding and adding features to their software.

@gorillapaws The biggest problem that I saw was finding a tappable client base. St. Louis is silly with colleges and universities, where advertisement is as easy as tape and fliers and the need very present. The plan was to get established, and then go for larger clients. The EFA links above may provide a faster track.
I hadn’t really considered web developers; I figured that they would already have staff for that sort of thing.

@Nullo there are a lot of freelance web designers. You’re right that the bigger firms will have staf on payroll for this, but indies may be interested in subbing it out. One way to find work might be to show up at local developer meetings.

Legal pitfalls? I don’t see many. Many businesses may require you have credentials that you may or may not have, but it’s probably up to them if they want to hire you – even in the health field, there are low barriers to entry.

Ethical pitfalls? I see lots. It can be hard to draw the line between helping and doing the work for them. I have gotten people with relatively low GPAs into excellent schools with essays I’ve helped them write, but I probably helped too much at times.

The biggest problem I would think would just be competition, but you didn’t go into enough details for anyone to comment on whether you’d have an edge (probably rightly so). Whatever your edge is, make sure it’s not something someone else will figure out soon too.

No freebies, don’t give away whatever you sell. Don’t give them the product until they pay (collecting afterwards is tough).

Make it easy to pay you. Offer PayPal and maybe even credit cards in person with Square

@Nullo Lots of web developers need copy writers and copy editors from time to time. And I often get store owners who aren’t good writers and would like to hire someone to take the product descriptions their manufacturers supply and wordsmith them so they don’t run afoul of the Google bot’s duplicate content filter.