When I started as an academic editor in 2020, I found this website where you could write descriptions for products. You know when you go to Walmart.com and you want to buy toilet paper, and there’s this little description about how it’s the best, softest, most absorbent toilet paper? Yeah, I wrote those. Remote car starters too.
It was awful.
But that humiliating start—the one I don’t tell people about at dinner parties—led to a six-figure editing business.
I’m here to tell you that your messy, imperfect, embarrassing start doesn’t determine your success. The only thing that kills more academic businesses than failure is waiting for the perfect moment to begin.
The perfectionism trap that keeps academics stuck
You’ve spent the last decade (or more) having everything you produce peer-reviewed, critiqued, and evaluated. Your dissertation went through seventeen rounds of feedback. Your journal articles took two years from submission to publication. You’ve been trained that submitting imperfect work equals failure.
So when you think about starting an editing business, your brain does what it’s been trained to do: wait. It wants to research more, plan better to make it perfect before anyone sees it.
Chris McRae, who now runs a successful writing workshop business, put it perfectly: “This could take me a year to figure out how to get started.” And he’s right.
I spent months spinning my wheels after leaving academia. I applied to non-academic jobs, and got rejected as “overqualified” for everything. I was scared, and I thought, “Nobody’s going to hire me. Nobody’s going to pay me thousands of dollars for editing.” So I waited, and I researched. I tried to figure out the perfect plan.
Lisa Anthony, a tenured computer science professor who started her academic editing side hustle, had “a lot of preconceived notions” about running a business. When she enrolled in my program and saw all the business content, her first thought was: “Oh my gosh, this was not what I thought I wanted to do.”
The cost of this perfectionism is months or years staying stuck.
Academia rewards those who think longest before acting. Business rewards those who act first, learn fast, and iterate.
My ugly start (spoiler: it was really ugly)
Let me tell you exactly how unglamorous my beginning was when I left my academic job.
I left academia in July 2019 by quitting my tenure-track job before the fall semester even started. I moved across the country to Maine with my husband and our one-year-old son. We had some savings, but I had no plan for what came next.
For months, I applied to every non-academic job I could find: marketing coordinator, communications specialist, grant writer. Every single rejection said the same thing: “overqualified.”
Then I published an academic book and worked with a freelance copy editor for the first time. I had no idea that copy editors existed. I didn’t even know that was a thing—at least not as something academics could do as a business. I knew publishers had them, but I didn’t realize people did this work independently.
I figured I was a strong writer. I’d edited countless student papers. How hard could it be?
So I started applying to freelance editing jobs. And that’s how I ended up writing product descriptions for toilet paper and remote car starters for Walmart.com. It was horrible, but I needed money.
Eventually, I found editing agencies. The pay was terrible—about 1.5 cents per word, which worked out to around $20 an hour when I was starting out and working slowly. The papers were often a mess with missing tables, missing figures or missing references.
But I learned. I got feedback from their quality assurance teams. I figured out where to stop editing, how many comments to leave, how to format complex documents. I was getting paid (barely) to learn instead of paying thousands for an editing certificate.
Still, it took me time to get up the courage to attract private editing clients. I knew that was how you made real money in this business, but I was terrified. Who would hire me? Why would anyone pay me thousands of dollars?
Finally, I got tired of taking peanuts. I did it anyway.
At the end of 2022, I had six private clients. In 2024, I had 55 clients and earned $107,000 as a freelance academic editor working 30 hours a week.
The lesson?
Your toilet paper era is temporary. But only if you start.
Other people’s ugly starts (they’re all winning now)
Chris McRae: the guy who printed the wrong files
Chris joined my May cohort thinking he’d become an editor. He discovered almost immediately that he hated copy editing. So he pivoted to coaching and developmental editing.
Then he pivoted again to physical products. “Writing workshops in a box”—actual boxes with prompts, tactile objects, and materials to help people write.
When I talked to him, he’d just printed an entire batch of materials using the wrong file version. He had to start over completely.
He also had a choice: “This could take me a year to figure out how to get started, or I could just go for it and do a good job, but make some mistakes.”
So he set an arbitrary deadline—September—and announced it publicly on LinkedIn. He forced himself to launch. He started with just 21 boxes, selling them on Etsy instead of building some perfect Shopify site.
His first sales came from strangers, not just friends and family. His newsletter signups weren’t just his mom and wife. It was working.
His philosophy: “Just because it’s not perfect doesn’t mean it’s not good.”
(You can find him at creatingcuriositycoaching.com if you want to see what “starting ugly” looks like in practice.)
Lisa Anthony: From “I never wanted to run a business” to selling a workshop seat in 2 hours
Lisa is a tenured professor in computer science at the University of Florida. When she enrolled in my program, she definitely did not want to start a business.
“I never wanted to run a business. I just wanted to do the cool stuff,” she told me. She had all these preconceived notions about what running a business would feel like. She was scared of being isolated, working alone, drowning in logistics and marketing and pricing.
But she did the ugly start anyway. She applied to editing agencies during the cohort and got hired by two of them within weeks. She started posting on LinkedIn even though it felt weird. She sent warm emails to people she knew. She took on editing and coaching clients alongside her full-time faculty job.
Now she says, “I’ve been really enjoying getting the marketing stuff together.”
She created a workshop to help people write NSF Career Grant proposals—something she won herself and had been helping colleagues with for free for years. When she opened enrollment, the first person signed up within two hours.
Her advice to anyone stuck in the “I don’t know how to run a business” trap?
“We weren’t trained for running a business, but then again we weren’t trained for a lot of things we do in academia. So when I started thinking that way I said, you know what, I am a successful woman of a certain age. I’m a tenured professor at an R1 university. I think I can decide what I spend my time on.”
The pattern
Neither one had it figured out when they started, and both made mistakes. But Chris and Lisa are both successful.
The difference between them and the people who stay stuck? They acted before they felt ready.
What “starting ugly” actually looks like
You don’t need a perfect business plan or a fancy website (a LinkedIn profile is enough to start). You don’t need expensive branding, a business degree, or an editing certificate. You definitely don’t need to quit your academic job first.
Here’s what you do need to start an academic editing business:
A one-page resume
Not your CV cut down—that’s painful and wrong. Start with a blank page, and at the top summarize the 3-4 bullet points about your strongest editing-related skills. Add job experience focused only on anything related to editing, writing, or teaching. Be specific: “Taught 12 writing-intensive courses with 200+ students” or “Supervised 15 graduate student research projects” or “Peer reviewed for 8 academic journals.”
Willingness to do imperfect work for low pay initially
Yes, editing agencies pay terribly. Around $20/hour when you’re starting. But they’re “practice.” If they don’t like your work, it’s just a freelance contract. You learn where to stop editing, you get feedback, and you build confidence. Lisa said it perfectly: “Being able to do that in a context where I was tightly constrained on time and I couldn’t luxuriously just sit around and obsess about all the details really helped. Those were the training wheels.”
Courage to tell three people what you’re doing
This will be weird and intrusive. Everyone feels scared to do this. But send a simple email to three people you know—grad school friends, colleagues in other departments, people you met at conferences. “I’m starting to take on editing clients who are struggling with [specific problem]. I want to help them [specific outcome]. Do you know anyone who might be interested? If so, could you share this email with them?” That’s it.
Action before you feel ready
Laura, one of my students, made business cards during her cohort. She went to one conference in her field and handed out as many cards as she could. That one conference brought her enough work to last an entire year. She didn’t have a perfect website. She barely had a plan. She just showed up and told people what she was doing.
The timeline reality? Lisa said, “I really only started this in February. It was like a slow process but it was consistently moving forward.” Chris went from May cohort to September launch—four months. I went from 6 clients at the end of 2022 to 55 clients in 2024.
Your ugly start doesn’t have to be long. It just has to happen.
Why your ugly start is actually perfect
Here’s what you learn from the terrible jobs when you’re building an editing business that you can’t learn any other way:
Editing agencies teach you where to stop. How many comments are too many. What clients actually want versus what you think they need. You learn to work within tight deadlines. You get feedback from quality assurance people on how to calibrate your work.
Bad clients teach you boundaries. The first time someone tries to pay you $50 for ten hours of work, you learn to say no. You learn what red flags look like, and you learn to trust your gut.
Low prices teach you to value your expertise. When you start at $20/hour and work your way up to $40, then $100, then $150+ per hour, you have evidence that your skills are worth more than you thought. You’re not guessing. You know.
Mistakes teach you what not to do next time. Chris printed the wrong files and had to start over. Now he knows to triple-check before printing hundreds of copies. I took on clients in fields way outside my expertise (chemistry papers—never again). Now I know my boundaries.
But here’s the most important thing: confidence builds with evidence, not permission.
When people pay you for your expertise—even just $50 for a quick edit—something shifts. You think, “Oh. This actually works. People value what I know.” Lisa said she had “low expectations for inquiries and then way exceeded them.” That success builds on itself.
Your academic training is actually an advantage here when starting a freelance editing business. You already know how to learn hard things. Lisa put it this way: “We’re just served up this task saying here, do this thing. And you’re like, I don’t know how to do this. But you figure it out because you’re a researcher and you’re a writer.”
Problem-solving is your superpower. You just have to point it at your business instead of your dissertation.
What to do with your fear
Let’s be honest: you’re terrified. I was terrified. Lisa said starting her business “scared the living daylights out of me.” Leslie Wang, a fellow writing coach, said she procrastinated for half a year on starting her podcast because she was so scared.
Here’s what I want you to know: that fear doesn’t go away. You have to just act anyway.
Chris set a public deadline on LinkedIn specifically to force himself to launch. I got tired of taking peanuts from editing agencies and finally reached out to private clients even though my hands were shaking. Lisa decided, “I think I can decide what I spend my time on.”
All your conflicting emotions are valid. Your fear is real. Your impostor syndrome is real. Your worry about what people will think is real.
But here’s the reframe: What’s scarier—trying and failing, or never knowing what was possible? Your fear is information. It’s telling you this matters. It’s telling you you’re stepping outside your comfort zone. That’s exactly where you need to be.
The invitation: start your academic editing business
Yes, I wrote descriptions for toilet paper and remote car starters. Yes, it was humiliating. Yes, I’m now running a six-figure editing business that gives me the freedom to work 30 hours a week, take summers off with my kids, and live wherever I want.
Your ugly start doesn’t determine your ending. It’s just the beginning of a much better story.
If you’re waiting for the perfect moment, this is it. If you’re scared, good—do it anyway. If you think you’re not ready, you never will be. The only way to get ready is to start.
I created Becoming an Academic Editor because I didn’t want anyone else to spend years figuring this out alone like I did. The program gives you the exact framework I used to go from toilet paper descriptions to six figures—the resume templates, the email scripts, the website structure, the pricing strategy, all of it.
But more importantly, you get a community of people who are starting their editing business ugly right alongside you. People who understand the fear because they’re feeling it too. People who will cheer when you land your first client and help you troubleshoot when things go wrong.
Your ugly start is waiting. The only question is whether you’ll begin.
If you’re ready to start, my Becoming an Academic Editor course can help you take that first step.
Listen to my podcast, Leaving Academia: Becoming an Academic Editor I interview people like Chris, Lisa, and Leslie about their journeys.