Many people are interested in starting their own Internet proofreading business but are put off by the high cost of the various courses that seem to be required to get into the profession. But is it really necessary to take one of these courses? Absolutely not. You can start your own business without paying a penny for external tuition. I should know - I've done exactly that. This is not to say there is anything wrong with proofreading courses - many provide valuable instruction and are professionally run by conscientious people. The problem is that they cost money - often quite a lot - and when you're first starting out in business you want to keep the costs down as much as possible. In addition, if proofreading is a new venture for you, there's always the possibility that you'll find you don't actually like it much once you get started. In that case, the money spent on the course would have been wasted. Much better to try it on your own first to get a taste of the business. If you like it, you can always take a course later on.

So how do you get started on your own? Well, first of all - and I'm going to be frank here - not everybody can. Proofreading isn't a job that suits everyone and you do need a certain aptitude and skills before you start. Before even considering working as a proofreader I suggest you need the following qualities:

• Good knowledge of grammar and spelling
• A genuine love of the language
• Ideally, some experience of writing
• Confidence in the use of computers

If my own character is anything to go by it also helps if you're slightly introverted, a bit of a nerd, mildly pedantic, and you have an unhealthy willingness to spend hours in front of a computer.
How about equipment? You don't need an awful lot compared to many other businesses, and many people will have everything they need already. The essential items are:

• A computer
• Good word processing software such as 'Word'
• A printer
• You'll also need a reliable internet connection

Setting up a website
The next step is to set up a website to establish your Internet presence and start attracting customers. You can pay someone to do this for you, but these days it's not hard to do it all on your own. You've got two tasks: designing a website, and getting it hosted on the Internet. As you're starting out, and testing the water, I suggest you keep the costs right down for both jobs. In fact, you can do both for free.

Designing the website
You don't need to be an expert in HTML to design a site. You can get a perfectly good one for nothing. Go to your favourite search engine and type in 'Free website templates'. You'll find hundreds of sites offering website templates that you can download and adapt to your own needs. All you have to do is to write the content. What you write is up to you but include details of your prices, the time you need for editing, your payment system, and how clients can send documents to you.

Hosting the site
Once again, this can be done for free. Before doing anything, check with your own service provider because you may already have some free web space with your account. If not, go back to your search engine and type in 'Free website hosting'. Once again, you'll be presented with a vast choice of sites, offering various deals. Choose one you like, upload your site following their instructions, and your website is live.

In time, your website will be automatically found by search engine 'spiders' and added to their databases. You can speed up the process by submitting your site manually to these search engines. If you're patient, you will start to get work. How successful you are will depend on how well you do that work and deal with your customers.

Of course, there are drawbacks to using the free options above but this approach is enough to get you started. If all goes well, you will want to consider moving on from the free approach and setting up a more professional site, buying a domain name, paying for advertising etc. But the approach above will start you off - it worked for me - and may set you on the road to Internet self-employment.