I wish I had known how important LinkedIn is to an editing business.

I wish I had known it eight years ago, when I launched Fiedler Editorial LLC. Thank Heaven I found out soon enough, thanks to some of my fellow members of the Editorial Freelancers Association (EFA).

LinkedIn is one way that potential clients learn about you and your editing services. You need to sell yourself on it. This does not mean exaggerating or inflating your accomplishments, but it does mean putting your best foot forward and showing people why they should hire you.

One way I was selling myself short on LinkedIn is that my “Experience” section read like a resume, with bullet points. This may be fine for certain kinds of careers, but for a freelance editor, it turns off potential clients. People will want to see how well you write and edit, so write in paragraph form. For example: “I edited scientific research manuscripts for clarity and correctness in spelling, grammar, and punctuation. The resulting work flowed much more smoothly and was easier to understand. It was published in [name of peer-reviewed journal].” This is more descriptive than bullets.

Another LinkedIn mistake I made before I started my business (and this is worse) was not having a profile picture. Nobody wants to look at a profile with a blank space there, and you are practically guaranteeing that people will click away from your profile if there is no picture there. However (and I made this mistake in the beginning), don’t use a selfie from your phone or a Facebook picture as your LinkedIn profile picture. Instead, get a professional headshot done and use that. LinkedIn is for professionals, so you should look like one. Professional headshots can be a little pricey ($50 at one well-known studio), but they are worth it. I was lucky enough to have a free professional headshot taken during an EFA conference.

What LinkedIn mistakes have you seen, or do you admit to having made in the past?

I love having my editing business. I love taking care of my business finances myself. I love the fact that I can set my own hours and I don’t have to ask for permission to go to a doctor’s appointment or take a day off to help my aging mother. Most of all, I love doing what I do best—editing!

However, when I launched my editing business in 2018, I was ignorant of several things about running an enterprise. Two weeks ago, I blogged about how little I knew about Zoom, how important it turned out to be, and how I became a Zoomer myself. Now, I am going to blog about something we have in my home state of Maryland called DAT.

DAT stands for Department of Assessments and Taxation. You probably felt that sinking feeling in your stomach when you read the word “Taxation,” didn’t you?

It has nothing to do with the IRS or the Office of the Comptroller of Maryland, which govern the income taxes my business pays to Uncle Sam and the state of Maryland, respectively. Frankly, I am not sure what role DAT plays in paying taxes. All I know is, I had better save money to pay the filing fee, which is not cheap.

When I fill out my DAT forms online (which I must do every year before April 15 to keep my business in good standing with the state), the main form I fill out is the Annual Report, in which I report my gross earnings for the year and answer some questions by checking boxes (these questions are not hard). When I get to the question asking if the total value of my business equipment is a certain amount of money or above, I receive a notice stating whether I need to also fill out the Personal Property Tax Return.

Thankfully, I only had to do this once—the first year I was in business. The Personal Property Tax Return is a royal pain in the rear end. A business owner must mentally divide all of their enterprise’s property into given categories, figure out how much the property in each category is worth minus depreciation, and list each amount on a grid by category. Personally, I would not wish this task on anybody.

Fellow independent editors, what kinds of administrative tasks do you despise?