2025 Q1: The best of times, the worst of times?

Now that the first quarter of 2025 has wrapped up, we all have some data on how things are going in the current, pretty turbulent economic environment. My take: For most people, it’s either the best of times, or the worst of times, with not a whole lot in between. Lately, when I talk to other freelancers (translators, interpreters, or writers), I feel like it’s:

• The best of times: “Had my first $15,000 month,” “New, great client fell from the sky;” or
• The worst of times: “Worst quarter since I started freelancing, giving it one more quarter and then considering switching careers completely or looking for an in-house job.” 

What’s going on here? Of course, no one really knows. I’m not an economist, and people way smarter than I am don’t know what’s going on, but here are a few observations. 

Sometimes, it’s mostly luck

For what it’s worth, first quarter went really well for me. I made over $10,000 more than in the first quarter of 2024 without working more hours. I can identify a few things I did: mostly working with a business coach who helped me with both mindset (self-sabotaging patterns in my business) and strategy (identifying parts of my business that I do and do not want to expand). I’m expecting that these things will continue to yield results over time, but in the short-term (this quarter), the bulk of the extra cash came from “out of nowhere” translation projects: three different direct clients who I hadn’t heard from in a while, and who sent big projects that were also really enjoyable. 

If you had the opposite kind of quarter, it honestly may just be luck, or a blip. I know that’s not super-comforting if you had a terrible quarter, but it’s true. Things may pick up, just because sometimes work volume goes in waves. 

Sometimes, it’s larger factors 

I also feel like the ChatGPT-induced dust is starting to settle, with problematic results for a lot of freelancers:

• Many agencies perceiving that, at least for high-volume, low/medium-visibility projects (by which I mean large amounts of text that aren’t particularly critical to the company’s operations but that have to be translated), their clients are pretty happy with machine translation plus a human editor. 
• Many agencies offering editing rates that are around half of what their translators made when they were paid by the word (i.e. a translator who used to make 12 cents a word and translate 500 words an hour is now being offered $25 or $30 an hour to edit machine translation). 
• Meaning that it’s hard to make a living on those rates, leaving a lot of freelancers a) living precariously off very little money/dipping into savings, or b) working an unrelated job on the side, or c) trying to find higher-paying clients, or some combination of the three. 

Sometimes, it’s the best of times 

When I posted on LinkedIn about my strong first quarter, I wondered if it was just me. It’s not; a number of people chimed in with similar results, and even greater income increases than I reported (one “best quarter since I started freelancing,” and one “up 26,000 euros”). Anecdotally, the same is true in a six-figure freelancer group I’m in. We did a first quarter debrief session, and there were a couple of people whose work has been so slow that they’re dipping into savings and looking at in-house jobs, and a couple of people racking up personal-best months. It’s a weird time. 

I’ve given a bunch of keynote speeches at translation conferences this year, and I’ve tried to beat a familiar drum. Right now, you need:

• A diverse business
• Working for clients who care 

You need at least some diversity in your client base or in the services you provide. In the current economic environment, even seemingly stable options (like the entire U.S. Federal government) have proven unstable. And you need clients who care, because the clients who don’t care have an increasing array of fast and cheap options to choose from. And (here’s the important part) there’s still tons of good language work out there, working for clients who either want you to avoid AI, or they really don’t care how the work is done, as long as it’s done well. The clincher: it takes a lot of work to find those clients, but I promise they’re out there. 

Have a great week! And if you want to leave a comment and tell me how your first quarter went, I’d love to hear.

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