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The Smart Techie was renamed Siliconindia India Edition starting Feb 2012 to continue the nearly two decade track record of excellence of our US edition.

How to Get Customers to Trust You

Prof. Srikumar S. Rao
Friday, January 31, 2003
Prof. Srikumar S. Rao
COPYEDITING IS A CHORE. EVERY MAGAZINE, every newsletter, every ezine, every book has—at some point—had someone go through it to make sure that the spelling is accurate, the grammar passable and the punctuation up to snuff. Major magazines like Forbes—I know, I write for Forbes—have multiple copy editors glance over each article. Many is the time when I have had a late night call from a copy editor who suggested a different turn of phrase or the excision of some redundancy. In most cases I felt that the prose was dramatically improved. There is a reason for this painstaking attention. Typos and bad sentence structure reflect poorly on the magazine's image. Advertisers have a habit of deserting publications that put an extra 'e' in judgment and leave out an 's' in Mississippi.

What does this have to do with Marketing? Patience. I'm about to tell you.

I received an email from a gentleman in Mumbai who introduced himself as a leading copyeditor. It was a breezy well-written missive and presented what seems like an unbeatable business proposition. Copyediting is expensive. Copyeditors think they are slightly lower on the ladder than galley slaves but when you add up the benefits and the overtime and the free coffee and other perks, they do show up in the cost structure. Why not, asked my unknown correspondent, use his services instead? He pointed out that he was based in India and therefore would be happy to work for an incredible pittance by U.S. standards. Also, because of the time difference, it is feasible to send off a packet of work in the evening and have it done and waiting for you when you come in the next morning.

All kinds of services are being outsourced to India— medical transcription, customer service, technical assistance, inbound and outbound telemarketing. Why not copyediting? The same cost advantages apply. There is a pool of skilled employees who are able and willing to do the work. I will lay you a substantial wager that, by this time next year, there will be many companies that are flourishing by providing copyediting services to companies in the U.S. and other English speaking countries. By the way, if any light bulbs are going off in your head and you want to start such a business drop me an email and I will put you in touch with the enterprising guy who wrote to me.

Despite this incredibly sound business assessment my correspondent had no luck marketing his services. As he humorously put it: “My long list of current American clients:”


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