Indexing as an Ideal Home Business

Some Factors that Might Influence Success as a Professional Indexer

Jun 15, 2007

A freelance professional indexer with thirty-five years experience offers some thoughts on the field based on results from a recent online survey of indexers.

Quite a few people are taking courses in learning to index. Those interested in becoming indexers want to know such things as how to market services, how hard it is to get jobs, how much one can make, what equipment and software is needed, etc. A survey of members of the indexersdiscussionlist may shed a bit of light on these issues.

Standard statistical methods for tests of significance (see possible survey bias below) suggest survey results should be representative of the full list of email list members within ± six percent at a 95% confidence level. For example, the percent of the sample who took some sort of indexing course was 68.3%. Within the limits noted, between 62.3% and 74.3% of the whole membership of the list have taken some sort of formal training in indexing. This includes correspondence courses, distance university study, video courses and courses as part of a master’s degree in Library Science. It may also include private courses with working indexers.

Getting that First Job

Most new indexers (55.9%) probably will take between two and five months to land the first job. Some (14.7%) take six to twelve months, but 26.5% get an assignment within the first month. Only 2.9% take over a year. There is a statistical significance between some kind of training and how long it takes to get the first job. However, the type of course taken—USDA, university-related, or individual— does not significantly affect the time to the first paid assignment.

About equal numbers are working part-time and full-time in the field. A high percent (87.8%) of indexers market their services with email predominating followed by the Web as secondary resource. Only 19.5% resort to “cold calling” or letters. There is a positive correlation between the effectiveness of email and job success as opposed to cold calls or letters.

Indexers’ Background and Software Use

Indexers have varying backgrounds, but 86.1% have a college degree, including 44.2% with a master’s degree. Only 11.6% have a two-year degree or no college at all. Fifty-one percent of list members belong to the American Society of Indexers (ASI).

Of the three major vendors of indexing software, Cindex for Windows™ is used by 54.7% of users, SKY Index Professional™ by 32.1% and Macrex has a 3.8% market share in this subset of indexers. The remainder uses other software.

There is a degree of congruence between this survey and one published by ASI in 2004. The changes worth noting are: 1) an increase in the use of emails and the Web for marketing and a decrease in the use of letters and cold calls; 2) An increase in learning by courses and a decrease in those who are self-taught. For estimates of income, readers can check the ASI Executive Summary.

Hints from the Survey

Suggested lessons for those interested in the field are:

· Do not expect to get a job immediately. It probably will take up to six months and could take as long as a year.
· Make heavy use of email and Web marketing (see Marketing on the Web for Indexers).
· Join the relevant indexing email lists.
· Formal training may result in getting jobs a bit sooner, but the kind of course does not seem to matter.

Possible Survey Bias

Statistical analyses of significance assume random sampling. By its nature, this survey, while sharing some aspects of randomness in terms of who chose to respond, still came from a self-selected sample, which in turn represents only a portion of the total number of indexers in the U.S.

The copyright of the article Indexing as an Ideal Home Business in Resources for Writers is owned by Charles Anderson. Permission to republish Indexing as an Ideal Home Business in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.