Personal Websites Editing and Proofreading Services

Somebody has read an article, liked it, and clicked through to the writer's own site to see about hiring them. The site has an about page, a blog and a contact form. What it does not say anywhere is whether this person takes work, what kind, roughly what it costs, or whether they are free before September — so the visitor closes the tab and emails somebody who did say.

We edit personal and professional websites for individuals — home pages and their one-line positioning, hire-me and services pages, availability and rate information, work and project pages, about pages, contact pages and their forms, and the short bios reused across other platforms. Our editors work on a site whose visitor has already decided they might want you.

The hire-me page and its statement of availability is what converts a reader into an enquiry, and its failure is a contact form with nothing beside it. A visitor deciding whether to make contact needs to know whether contact is welcome. We work through these so the page states plainly whether the person is taking work, since a site that is silent on this is assumed to be a hobby and the most common reason a good enquiry never arrives; so the kinds of work wanted are named with the kinds not wanted, because a visitor with a job they are unsure about will not ask and a named exclusion invites the ones that fit; so an indication of cost appears — a range, a minimum, a typical project — given that a visitor who cannot tell whether this is a two-hundred or a twenty-thousand pound conversation usually chooses not to start it; so availability is stated as a date rather than as "currently accepting enquiries", as one is information and the other is decoration that ages badly; so the process is described in three or four steps so a nervous first-time buyer knows what happens after they press send; so the response time is promised and kept; so the form asks for the two or three things needed to reply usefully rather than for everything; and so the page says what to include in a first email, since most enquiries arrive with too little to answer. Pages written this way turn readers into clients.

Everything you send is treated in confidence, including rates, client information and unpublished work. We are editors rather than business or marketing advisers, and we offer no view on pricing, positioning or your practice. What we can do is tell the visitor whether to get in touch.