Wrapping up the first half of 2025

Well hello and happy July, Training for Translators subscribers! As the “school year” wraps up, I have two classes on tap for you before I take a break in August

Upcoming direct client marketing classes

This Thursday, July 3, I’m offering a free, one-hour webinar: The fundamentals of direct client marketing.

If you’d like to go deeper on that topic, Direct client marketing launch pad starts on Monday, July 7 and runs through August 1. Praised by past participants (“I liked the methodical organization of the class, starting with gathering information on clients who may need your services, and then moving on to contacting them”), this four-week program combines self-paced video lessons, weekly tasks, and Q&A sessions with me. Registration is $250 (American Translators Association members, use coupon code ATA for $30 off!) and you have access to the course materials for six months.

This week’s topic: The first half of 2025!

It’s July 1, so the data is in for the first half of 2025, a truly tumultuous time in the freelance world. With these summaries, I don’t mean to blather on about my life as if I’m particularly important (I’m not!); I just hope that my data and insights can help you gather data and insights on your own business in this rollercoaster of a moment.

The numbers

In my business, the numbers are good. After paying subcontractors (guest instructors for Training for Translators classes), I earned $75K, finally on track with the income goal I set back in 2021 and that I’ve been inconsistently grinding toward ever since. Better yet, my goal for this year was to divide my income evenly between direct language work (translating and interpreting) and teaching/writing/consulting/book royalties, and I’m pretty much there, with $40K coming from direct language work and $35K coming from “other.”

Why the increase? A few things: working with a business coach pushed me to take more of my own advice. I negotiated some higher guest speaking/presenting fees, and I’ve been more assertive about marketing Training for Translators. For anyone interested in online course sales data, this uptick in marketing led to more unsubscribes at first, but my open rate actually increased slightly (43% to 45%) and my list has grown by about 500, now totaling about 4,800 people.

Also, translation work has been up. Mostly in “fluke” ways, to be honest. A couple of occasional direct clients popped up with large projects, I did a large project for a one-off direct client (filling in for a translator on medical leave), and I’ve had a steady stream of official document translations.

My income flow has also smoothed out as compared to last year. I wrote about this in my 2024 wrapup, setting a goal of one or two sub-$10K months rather than four. So far, so good. I’ve had only one sub-$10K month so far ($6,700 in April), partially due to a late payment for a large translation, and I had my highest-grossing month ever, $26K in March, due to lots of translation and interpreting work and the T4T March Marketing Madness challenge.

The work

Work is good, with some ups and downs! Despite the general craziness in the freelance world, I landed a new, interesting, and ongoing interpreting client in healthcare technology, a totally new area for me. One of my favorite interpreting clients sent me on a really fun travel assignment to Las Vegas, and I’ve enjoyed all of the translation work that I’ve done. And my new book, Getting Started as a Freelance Interpreter, is here, and the reviews are positive so far!

Of course, it’s not all positive. I had been doing a lot of remote court interpreting for a state without any local French interpreters, but it looks like they’ve now found someone nearby. A promising translation direct client (large, interesting projects) fell through because we couldn’t agree on the editing process. Ultimately I felt good about this because I declined to work with them if they wouldn’t pay for a secondary editor, but it was still a bummer to lose a client after a test project that went really well.  

Life

Life rolls on as it always does; I’m not a fundamentally anxious person, but ever since the U.S. election, I’ve had more of a feeling that the world may just end. I know that sounds dramatic, but I mean that if DOGE fires the entire staff of the Department of Energy and the American nuclear arsenal goes haywire (not as crazy as it sounds), I don’t want to be standing in my yard, watching the incoming nuclear missiles and thinking, geez, I should have taken that trip to Fiji.

So I’ve taken a bunch of time off lately, which will be the source of some upcoming off-topic blog posts. I did in fact go to Fiji for a week with my best friend from high school (amazing), my husband and I did the Grand Canyon Rim-to-Rim-to-Rim hike for our 25th anniversary (equal parts exhausting and exhilarating), and I took last week off to go to cello camp in San Rafael, California (basically the best week ever).

The disruptions in the freelance world are a lot to deal with right now, and I’m honestly not sure that AI is even the worst of it. I’ve talked to a number of translators and interpreters whose businesses have been decimated by the U.S. federal government budget cuts (USAID-funded NGOs basically disappearing, federal courts pre-emptively cutting budgets). Pretty much every day I’m hearing, or reading on LinkedIn, stories like, “My 15-year freelance business has basically evaporated in the past 15 months,” “Worst quarter since 2019,” “Lost two of my three anchor clients in the past six months.”

I try to remind myself that these stories are scary to hear, that they’re not my story (right now at least), and that mainly I need to maintain the kind of business I tell other people to pursue: a diverse business, for clients who care. I’m fortunate to have that, and it’s a goal I think we all need to keep top-of-mind right now.

I hope these insights are helpful! Just drop a comment if there’s anything you want to ask me or tell me.

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