Crafting your Indexer Locator Listing

By Maureen Johnson
Spring 2013

Connie Binder presented a session on how to craft a useful Locator listing to advertise your business. She had a lot of good advice on how to make your listing as useful as possible. The Indexer Locator page is one of the most-visited pages on the ASI website. The primary users of the list are small publishers, organizations that publish infrequently, individual authors, and experienced indexers looking for assistance. In addition, large publishers use the list when a specialized project requires skills not available in their usual pool of indexers.  The fee for a listing is $150 per year. This fee easily pays for itself with even one project.

Connie had many tips for crafting your listing and discussed the tips listed on the ASI website.

10 Tips to Make Your Locator Listing Work for You:
  1. Keep your contact information updated so that a potential client can reach you promptly via phone and/or email.
  2. Include a link to your website, if you have one. 
  3. Include your years of experience as an indexer, especially if it sounds impressive. If you been indexing longer than you care to remember, pick an honest number and simply say "more than x years." 
  4. Include any specific or unusual specialties in your description. 
  5. Periodically update or rewrite your description to reflect current interests or recent expertise. 
  6. Show your description to a colleague. Ask for their opinion. 
  7. Compare your listing with others, both generally and in your subject category. How does yours stack up? How can you distinguish your services from other indexers? 
  8. Mention your ASI Indexer Locator listing in your other marketing materials. Since only ASI members can take out a listing, it indicates that you are a serious indexer. 
  9. Like advertising, a one-time listing isn't effective. Familiarity is important. Potential clients need to know they can always find you again. 
  10. If you cannot accept a project from an established client, refer your client to the Indexer Locator. This builds goodwill. They won't forget your helpfulness.