Most editors and writers start with the wrong step. Here is the right order.
I have built over 22 websites for writers and authors. Before that, I spent 12 years designing for brands like Disney and Nike.
The single most common mistake I see? Talented freelancers pouring time and energy into marketing before they have built anything worth marketing toward.
They post. They pitch. They show up consistently. And nothing converts. Not because they are doing marketing wrong. Because three things are missing underneath it.
Fix these three things first. Then market.
1. A website that answers three questions in eight seconds.
When someone lands on your website, they decide whether to stay or leave almost instantly. Not after reading your bio. Not after scrolling to your portfolio. In the first few seconds.
Those seconds need to answer: who are you, what do you do, and who is it for.
Most freelance websites fail that test. The homepage opens with a name and a navigation menu. The bio is buried below the fold. There is no clear headline that tells a potential client they are in the right place.
The first thing I do with every client is ask: what do you want a visitor to do when they land here? If the answer isn’t immediately visible on the page, we fix that before anything else.
A clear website does not need to be complicated. It needs one strong headline, a short sentence about who you serve, and one action for the visitor to take next. That is it.
Everything else is secondary.
2. A lead magnet worth saying yes to.
A mailing list does not grow because you have a signup button. It grows because you give someone a specific, immediate reason to hand over their email address.
For debut and indie authors, the highest-converting lead magnets are not a free chapter or a vague newsletter promise. Readers opt in for one reason: they want more of the feeling your book gives them, right now.
What actually converts, by genre:
- Romance: A bonus POV scene or extended epilogue. Readers want to know what he was thinking. Give them that. Conversion rate: 50 to 60 percent.
- Fantasy: An origin story or villain prequel. Lore they cannot get anywhere else. It makes your main book feel like a sequel they are already late for.
- Historical fiction: An annotated deleted scene or visual research dossier. This audience is research junkies. Feed that. They will become your most loyal reviewers.
- Nonfiction and memoir: A short quiz or self-assessment tied to your book’s core idea. Two minutes, personalized result, immediate value. Readers opt in because it is about them, not you.
- Business: A plug-and-play template, calculator, or one-page action plan from your book. This audience is time-poor. If it saves them work today, they will give you their email.
The rule across all of them: the incentive delivers the feeling or the value of the book before the book is in their hands.
For freelance editors, proofreaders, and writers, the highest-converting offers are not vague promises of future content. They are tools that solve a real problem today.
The four that convert best for this audience, in order:
- A current pricing guide. Freelancers are chronically anxious about undercharging. A clear PDF showing what to charge for different services in 2026 converts at 50 to 60 percent. It solves the most painful, least discussed problem in the industry.
- Pitch email templates. The exact emails that get responses from authors, publishers, and agencies. Finding clients is the second biggest pain point. Remove the guesswork and conversion follows.
- A client intake checklist. Ten questions to ask before saying yes to a project. Every editor who has ever experienced scope creep wishes they had this three clients ago.
- An editing speed tracker. A simple spreadsheet that calculates words per hour. Since most editors charge by project, knowing your actual speed is the fastest way to increase your effective hourly rate.
Notice what all of these have in common. They are not about you. They are about the person you are trying to reach. That shift in thinking is the whole game.
3. A brand that earns trust before you say a word.
People decide whether to trust you before they read your credentials.
They decide based on how your website looks. Whether it feels considered or cobbled together. Whether it reads like someone who takes their craft seriously or someone who built a site in an afternoon and moved on.
This matters especially for editors and proofreaders. You are selling precision, care, and professional judgment. If the platform that represents you is visually inconsistent or hard to navigate, it quietly works against everything your work stands for.
Design is communication.
A coherent, intentional brand says one thing before a client reads a single word: I know what I am doing.
You do not need an expensive rebrand. You need consistency. A clear color palette, one or two fonts used with intention, and imagery that reflects the quality of your work. That is enough to shift how a potential client reads everything else on your site.
Build the engine first. Then you can market.
Once these three things are in place, marketing works differently. The same post that used to get ignored now sends people somewhere worth going. The same effort that used to feel wasted starts compounding.
Marketing amplifies what is already there. Build something worth amplifying first.
If you are not sure where your foundation stands, I put together a free resource for authors that walks through exactly what to clarify before you build or rebuild anything online. It is the same worksheet I use with every custom author client.
You can download it at maitedalila.com/freebie.
Maite Dalila
is a brand strategist, web designer, and storyteller who’s spent over 12 years helping brands like Disney and Nike create meaningful, human-centered experiences. Now, she focuses on helping authors build websites that feel like an extension of their voice and story, that don’t just look good but grow their audience and sell their books. She also writes fiction, so she understands the creative process from both sides. Through workshops, design strategy, and branding, she helps authors simplify the overwhelm of building an online presence, so they can focus on what matters most: their stories.
I checked the NAIWE website stats for the first week in July, and member Noelle Barrick’s blog post, “Adventures in Freelance Teaching, or How to Use Cuss Words to Your Advantage” is the top post among the linked NAIWE blogs.
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Laura Pennington Briggs
Are you finding it harder to attract clients to your portfolio or website?
Jeanne Grunert
Now what? Indeed!
Why does an author need a good website? And why should they pay for one instead of using one of the many free ones? Or isn’t it easier to use Facebook or the writer’s blog they have been using? However, the best answer for writers is to have a website is yes. Unlike social media and blogging, an author website means you will spend time building your writing platform. Every author’s online platform is their most significant asset, and creating one is vital for your long-term success.
Pamela K. Kinney gave up long ago ignoring the demanding voices in her head and has been writing ever since. Her horror short story, “Bottled Spirits,” was runner-up for the 2013 WSFA Small Press Award and considered one of the seven best genre short fiction for that year. She has various short stories and poems published in fiction and nonfiction anthologies, magazines, and online zines, a science fiction novella, an urban fantasy novel, five nonfiction ghost books, and a nonfiction cryptid book. Her horror poem, “Dementia,” got her mentioned in Best Horror of the Year, Volume Thirteen. She has stories and poems in two horror anthologies to be released in 2024, plus a YA dark fantasy novel, Demon Memories, first book in the Moon Ridge trilogy.
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Suzanne Lynn Cheesman has been in radio for over 25 years, in New Jersey, South Dakota, Minnesota, Missouri, and Florida as well as having hosted her own nationally syndicated show. She now runs a digital media company that helps authors sell more books and build their brand with video and radio interviews. She currently hosts the Triangle Spotlight radio show on WQBQ 1410-AM, a Central Florida radio station that has a coverage area of half a million people. On this show, you can hear authors from around the country and around the world share their heart behind the writing of their books.
Mikhail Bakhtin was a 20th century Russian philosopher who expanded upon Marxist thought to define the social function of language. His work, forever ahead of its time, stumps scholars to this day. In fact, much of what Bakhtin wrote aligns with poststructuralist thought, a movement that didn’t emerge until just before his death, in 1975. In his 1935 essay “Discourse in the Novel,” Bakhtin draws attention to the way a variety of diverse discourses work together, to explain, “a concrete socio-ideological language consciousness . . . where consciousness finds itself inevitably facing the necessity of having to choose a language” (677). To quote my favorite professor’s favorite Bakhtin, “When we stare at each other, two different worlds are reflected in the pupils of our eyes. Dialogue, the give and take of language, completes these two worlds” (Salyer). But what if the person you are staring at isn’t physically there? What happens to language when pupils are replaced by a message board, a photo, or a post? Is there a virtual give and take between dialogue and reflection in our digital world? Have we become blind to authenticity, communicating now through only that which is implied? Perhaps the answer lies somewhere in-between, in the virtu-verse of social discourse.
Ashley Henyan is a digital marketing consultant, a freelance writer, and the executive director for the American Red Cross of Lowcountry South Carolina. Previously, she held leadership roles in digital communications and media relations with the Red Cross (the 2017 Harris Poll Non-profit Brand of the Year). Ashley has-developed curriculum and trained hundreds of staff and volunteers across the United States in courses like Leveraging Your Story on LinkedIn and Social Media Story Telling. She has been invited to discuss social media marketing and brand visibility on various podcasts and with local and national associations. Ashley has played an integral part in award-winning social media campaigns including honorable mention recognition with the PR Daily Content Marketing Awards and numerous Silver Telly Awards for Branded Content. She holds a B.A. in government and politics from the University of Maryland and an M.A. in English and creative writing with a concentration in screenwriting from Southern New Hampshire University. Ashley’s work as a ghostwriter has appeared in national and international publications including Yahoo News, China Global Television Network, and The CEO Magazine.
Are you familiar with the marketing term “branding?” Branding is the art and science of creating and building an instantly recognizable persona that sums up the heart of the company’s features, products, services, and benefits.
Jeanne Grunert
Laura Pennington Briggs is the founder and CEO of the Freelance Coach. A two-time TEDx speaker on how freelancing is changing the economy and the host of the weekly Advanced Freelancing podcast, Laura has helped over 15,000 freelancers start and scale their business. She’s an expert on systems, project and client management, marketing a solopreneur business, delegating to team members, retainers, and developing multiple income streams for writers of all stripes. Laura is the author of five books, including the Six Figure Freelancer and How to Start Your Own Freelance Writing Business. She’s also the founder of Operation Freelance, a national nonprofit providing free entrepreneurship training to military spouses worldwide.