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In 2018, 6 years after I started off as a freelancer, I became a six figure translator. Trust me after I say nobody was more surprised than me as I reached that goal.
I used to be probably in the highest 1% of translators when it comes to yearly income, but I used to be not a public figure. I wasn’t giving courses, presenting at conferences or bragging about this result on my profiles. I used to be simply following a basic system, which didn’t have room for mainstream advice about freelancing.
In truth, I crossed the six-figure mark without ever:
- Charging top 1% rates
- Making a social media post about my business
- Actively networking with colleagues
- Using a website or a blog to draw leads
What was I doing then? I used to be using 5 easy tactics.
1. I used to be extremely productive (so I didn’t have to charge top 1% rates)
Thus far, I actually have never charged any client greater than €0.15/word. My rates are solid, but not crazy high – normally within the €0.09 to 0.12 per-word range. My secret? I used to be – and I still am – extremely productive.
The typical translator can do 2,000 to three,000 recent words per day. I can easily do 5,000, and may get as high as 8,000 if needed.
Something interesting happens if you end up this productive.
In case you can only translate 2,500 words per day, assuming you might be working 48 weeks per 12 months, you’ll have to charge €0.17 to get to 6 figures. As a translator, finding clients who will pay that much is difficult.
You must work with direct clients only, you could do constant marketing, outreach, content, networking and a variety of other things. This, to me, all the time appeared like a lot of labor.
In case you can translate twice as many words per day, though, you simply have to charge €0.09/word. That is a price most good translation agencies will pay – you just white label your services to them, show them that your work is well worth the price, do the job and deliver on time.
Boring? Yes. Effective? Just as much.
2. I used to be pretty easy to search out
Studying the fundamentals of search engine optimization, I understood pretty quickly that I wouldn’t have the opportunity to rank a website for the terms clients would use to search out me. Paying someone to try this for me wasn’t an option either, as I’d be fighting with translation agencies with a budget 100 times larger than mine.
As I wanted leads to return to me, that opened a dilemma – how could I do this without a website? The reply was easy, and it involved two channels:
- LinkedIn – I paid someone to optimize my profile to incorporate my language pair and areas of experience and write some decent copy. My LinkedIn profile was not too complex, just 4 to 500 words of copy about what I did. It has generated 5 to six clients every 12 months for years.
- Proz.com directory – the Proz.com directory is the important directory on the planet for translators. Translation buyers use it day-after-day to search out translators for his or her projects! I worked hard for two years to rank as high as possible within the directory, and it worked amazingly, providing a regular stream of leads since.
My two lead generation channels were meant to draw localization managers at direct clients in my niches and vendor managers of translation agencies basically. And so they ran like clockwork.
3. I acted like a human being – which paid back in referrals
This recommendation was not banal years ago, and it’s much more relevant in the times of AI.
In all my communication with clients, past and present, I acted like a human being. I wasn’t just accepting projects and sending them back. I used to be asking the client how their holidays were, what the weather was like, in the event that they had plans for the weekend.
You recognize, normal questions people ask.
I didn’t do it for business reasons, and I encourage you not to start out with that purpose in mind. I did it because I desired to have a good relation with them.
If you could have been a freelancer for greater than 3 days, you recognize it gets pretty solitary. I simply craved human connection and was genuinely curious to get to know who was on the opposite side of the screen.
Unexpectedly, this curiosity became a marketing vehicle. I can’t count the variety of times someone reached out saying I had been really helpful by a colleague or friend. They were often amazing clients.
In hindsight, it is smart – if you happen to communicate through emails all day, then your emails begin to define your personal branding, far more than your social profiles or web sites.
4. I began pitching
Once my rates had grown significantly, my conversion rate (the variety of leads who actually became customers) went down accordingly.
I noticed I had reached a plateau.
Don’t get me fallacious – at $60,000 to 80,000 per 12 months, I could have stopped there. But I had a six figure goal in mind, and I used to be determined to achieve it.
Cold email pitches ended up being the proper tool to interrupt the plateau.
The approach I followed was pretty easy – a couple of times per 12 months, I identified a highly targeted group of boutique agencies or direct clients in an area I desired to pursue, then reached out to them.
I never sent a huge variety of pitches – at any time when I applied this tactic, my list was probably within the 30 to 60 contacts range. I did, nonetheless, use different techniques to otimize my emails to a T.
I A/B tested subject lines. I sent 100-word emails in addition to 500-word ones. I attempted different hooks and I modified my call to actions.
Slowly but surely, in a couple of years I went from mainly no results to a 25% response rate.
The clients that I got through pitches were (almost) all the time my highest-paying ones.
5. I all the time invested in my business
As freelancers, we all know thoroughly a DIY approach doesn’t guarantee the identical results a skilled would offer. That’s why I selected to deal with what I knew – translation – and outsourced all the pieces else to qualified pros. Through the years, I paid for:
- CV writing
- Email campaign setup
- LinkedIn profile optimization
- Website creation
- Business card design
I even had an infographic resume designed that cost me $2,500 and never got me a single client – but that’s a different story.
The purpose here just isn’t what worked and what didn’t. The purpose is that if you happen to are running a business, it is best to treat it as such.
Investing in memberships, online courses and promotional materials wasn’t low cost, nevertheless it allowed me to get access to clients I never would have imagined without spending money first.
Key takeaways
You could be tempted to think the successful freelancers in your field are those with a huge following. Those that wrote books about your career, or are giving courses to newcomers.
You almost certainly think that if you wish to achieve success you could have to do what also they are doing. Posting on social media as often as they’re, giving presentations at conferences, having web sites that look (and possibly are) expensive or implementing complex lead generation strategies.
I do know, because I used to think the identical.
The reality, though, is sort of different – in my experience, becoming a six figure freelancer is straightforward.
You only have to be good at what you do – and if you happen to aren’t, work to improve over time – and develop a system to generate and nurture leads.
Next time, we’re going to discuss exactly methods to construct such a system.
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