Have you ever been the editor of a site or magazine? Then you know how much time is spent brushing up people’s contributions, removing silly errors, sometimes fact checking, and even doing occasional formatting. I know that most blogs allow authors to proofread and publish their posts themselves, and it is good for the content flow, but bad for quality. We’re doing that on The Blog Herald, a site built on news and feature posts being more or less longer news, and it’s the only way to do it. Unless you have a proofreader sitting on standby all the time, it’s just not possible not to have this kind of posting procedure.

Devlounge, however, is an entirely different matter. I’m finding more and more of my allocated time there, being the editor and paid by Splashpress for it, eaten up by editing contributor’s articles. It’s OK to spend time fine-tuning pieces for a site like Devlounge, not built on news coverage but slower content, like tutorials and reviews, tips and tricks. It doesn’t matter if an article takes another day to complete due to proofreading, at least not as long as the quality is ensured.

On the flipside, spending this amount of time editing Devlounge pieces, means less posts from me. That’s not a good thing, I like to think. Compare it to the amount of stories I’m doing for The Blog Herald, and you’ll see quite a difference. And that’s despite the fact that I’m doing a ton of planning, and other things, behind the scenes to prepare for the upcoming redesign and reborn version of the site!

I’m not sure I like the development, honestly, but I do believe that it’s a good thing.

One thing’s for sure though, and this is no surprise to me who’s been working with editorial staffs’ for the last ten years or so; Editing other people’s work takes a lot of time. If you’re going to charge a client for doing editorial work, consider this, and consider it carefully.