2025: The year in review!

It’s time for my annual year in review post! I’ve also been posting on LinkedIn this week, including a piece on “How do I work up the confidence to market to direct clients, when I know that I’m not the cheapest option??” And remember this year’s mantra…I’ll keep reminding you! Marketing: Do something! Just do more of any kind of marketing.

I’ve been writing year-end review posts for a while. Here’s 2024, 2023, 2022, and 2021. I’ll say that this year feels different. I had a great year, due to various factors including luck, experience, working hard, and being willing to try new things. And at the same time, I’m aware that a lot of people in the language professions had a truly terrible year. My goal here isn’t to rub it in, it’s to give some examples of what’s working for me, a few fails, and what I’m looking forward to this year.

Goals!

First, let’s see how I did on the goals I set in my 2024 post.

• Higher income: Check. I earned US $145,000 after paying my subcontractors; the most I’ve earned in 23 years of freelancing and 20K more than I made in 2024. I set this goal in 2021 and finally reached it. I also achieved a sub-goal: more consistent earnings. In 2024, I earned less than $10,000 in four out of 12 months (not ideal) and in 2025, that was down to one month out of 12. In April, I made $6,596, partially due to a delayed payment for a large translation project, but in the other 11 months, I earned more than 10K, and I also had my highest-earning month ever, 26K in March.  
• Maintain roughly the same mix of translation and interpreting: Check. My income is 50/50 between direct language work and teaching/writing consulting, I interpreted 95 days in court and 95 conference/non-court days, did a lot of really interesting translation work, and worked on Training for Translators the rest of the time.
• Mix it up with Training for Translators. Check. I launched a new class (Direct Client Research Lab, now in its fifth session), started offering monthly free webinars, increased my mailing list by almost 500 people (to almost 5,000 as of today), and had the largest-ever session of March Marketing Madness.
• Prepare the 20th anniversary edition of How to Succeed as a Freelance Translator. Half a check? After publishing Getting Started as a Freelance Interpreter in June, I needed a break from book writing, then I worked so much from September-December (more on this below) that I did sporadic work on the book, but it’s nowhere near done.
• Spend an hour a day on my passion projects. Nope! Fail! I took on so much paid work that this didn’t happen. More on this below.
• Meditate, exercise, and cultivate my non-screen hobbies, including attending summer cello camp. Three quarters of a check? A theme of last year is that I feel like I worked slightly too much. But I attended cello camp (amazing), I finished climbing 14 of Colorado’s 14,000-foot peaks, and my husband and I did the Grand Canyon rim-to-rim hike for our 25th anniversary, plus I went to Fiji (no kidding) with my best friend from high school.

Fails

It wouldn’t be, well, a year of being a human, without a few fails. And honestly, I think that trying something and having it not work out isn’t necessarily a fail, it’s a learning experience (“You’ll only make that mistake once,” is an oft-repeated saying at my house!). For me, this year’s non-successes included:

• Paying a virtual assistant to prepare and format a compilation of my blog posts that has sold a total of 18 copies. Total revenue, about 15% of what it cost me to create the thing!
• Creating a Start Here page on my website, including recorded webinars on getting started, working with agencies, and working with direct clients, that has now sold exactly one recording of one webinar (zero sales of the other two).
• Radically under-pricing the first session of Direct Client Research Lab, which I offered at $110 and it sold out in two hours. Since then I’ve been increasing the price incrementally, but multiple participants have told me that they paid $500+ for coaching programs that were less valuable than this one. Just goes to show, even when you teach other people how to do these things, you still make the same mistakes that everyone else does!
• Creating a hardcover edition of Getting Started as a Freelance Interpreter that no one (no one) bought. This cost me only $300 extra when I published the book, so we’ll just put it in the “a mistake I’ll only make once” category. The book is selling well overall, but nobody wants the hardcover!

Successes

Despite the events referenced above, this really was an excellent year.

• I’m finally (finally!) earning the freelance equivalent of a six-figure salary.
• Oddly enough, I did a lot more translation work than in 2024, largely for one end client, but I also landed a new law firm client.
• Getting Started as a Freelance Interpreteris out in the world and doing well, and I’m already at break-even (it cost me $4,000 to publish it and last year’s book royalties were $4,992).
• I love interpreting. I still feel that doing an MCI during COVID is one of the best decisions I’ve made in 20+ years of freelancing.
• I love helping people through Training for Translators. I know this sounds cliché, but in addition to getting positive feedback on individual classes, it’s incredibly gratifying to hear from people who say, “I followed your business advice, and this is the happiest I’ve been in my adult life because I’m doing work that feels meaningful and earning what I want to be earning.”
• I took a literary translation class through ALTA and loved it. This sparked the idea for a translation of a book that’s in the public domain; stay tuned!

• I put almost all of my additional earnings into savings. I’m not going to brag about how much I made, because I hate the “Don’t you wish you could be me???” attitude among high-earning freelancers. But I will give myself credit here: of the 20K more I earned this year, I put 16K of it into savings, avoiding lifestyle inflation and impulse spending, which I see as the two biggest pitfalls of earning a higher income.
• Not lowering my rates in a tough economy. I realize that I’m very fortunate in multiple ways, not least of all that I don’t have to make six figures in order to survive. This year, I wanted to earn more money, for a variety of reasons: some big travel goals, the concern that my husband may lose his job (he works at a government research lab that is in the Trump administration’s sights), and wanting to do some deferred maintenance on our house, among others. But in practical terms, our mandatory expenses are very low. Our house is paid off and we have no other debt, and my daughter is in her last semester of university and is planning on getting a job that uses her engineering degree, so our expenses are actually going down instead of up. I realize this isn’t the case for everyone, and this gives me the ability to say no to low-paying work, plus I’m happy to report that none of my current clients asked me to lower my rates.

Why?

I feel like in this very challenging moment for a lot of freelancers, it’s good to break down some of the “Why” behind what was, for me, a very good year.

• Experience certainly helps, for a few reasons. When clients come to someone with 20+ years of experience, they typically know it’s not going to be cheap, and they either need someone with that level of expertise, or they just want to find someone who seems reliable and get the project done. Also, the longer you freelance, the more highs and lows you survive. In these crazy times, I tell myself, hey, I freelanced through the 2008 financial crisis, two of my husband’s major health crises (pacemaker, mountain bike accident), COVID, etc. etc. and I’m still here, so surely I can get through AI fever and the current geopolitical disruptions.
• Finally deciding, enough already with the income. I set this goal five years ago and I’m still not there. When is someday, if not now??
• The ongoing benefits of the business coaching I did at the end of 2024.
• Luck. Honestly, anyone who had a great year and doesn’t attribute at least some of it to luck is a big liar. For example, one of my largest interpreting clients was an “Oh by the way…” referral from a colleague. Another one resulted from a video interview that I initially thought wouldn’t turn into anything. There’s definitely an element of right place, right time.
• Thinking ahead. When I decided to pursue an interpreting Master’s in 2020, it was a combination of factors: time on my hands (COVID), something I had always been interested in, and feeling that interpreting would be less affected by technology than translation would be. I’m not saying I had the crystal ball (I didn’t), but it does frustrate me when people say, these days, “I’m sitting here watching my longtime business crumble to nothing!” As I said to someone the other day, unless you have both the financial resources and the desire to stop working, don’t do that! Don’t just sit there and watch; turn your marketing up to 11 while looking at diversifying your business.
• Trying new things: I tell students all the time, you literally don’t know until you try. This year, I tried a few new marketing initiatives. Some led to literally nothing (newsletter sponsorships: big fat zero), while others have already led to about as much work as I can handle. The important thing is having the courage to try!

2026 Goals

So, now what??? Here are some of my goals for 2026, both tangible and “soft.”

• Publish the 20th anniversary edition of How to Succeed as a Freelance Translator. I honestly feel bad that the third edition is still selling well, because it’s so outdated. This is a big priority for 2026.
• Get out of the scarcity mindset with interpreting. Crazily enough, I will have finished the Glendon MCI five years ago (!!) in a few months, and I’ve dramatically exceeded my goals for how much interpreting I’m doing. I love, love, love interpreting, and it’s a lot more tiring than translation, because it’s on someone else’s schedule. So I’m giving myself permission to have more of an abundance mindset with interpreting and realizing that I don’t have to accept every single assignment.
• Work shorter days and leave more time for my creative interests. I’m not a crazy workaholic, I almost never work on weekends, and (for an American) I take a good amount of vacation. But I do sometimes work long days: last year it wasn’t unusual that I would log on at 6:30 AM my time for an interpreting assignment on Eastern time, then stay at the office until between 5 and 6 PM. This year I’m trying to set a policy that a work day is eight hours. Today I had to get to my office at 7, so I’m leaving at 3. I’m hoping that this will free up more time in the evenings for yoga classes and my creative interests, and I’m setting a goal of going to yoga and practicing both of my musical instruments (cello and Renaissance lute) on most weekdays.
• Take a multi-week computer-free vacation. As referenced above, I take a decent amount of vacation (around six weeks a year), but most of the time, I have my computer with me and I do a little work here and there. Inspired partially by a couple of presentations I attended this year with presenters who really kill it on work-life balance (i.e. working four days a week with three months of computer-free vacation), I’m trying harder in this area! Over the recent holidays, I did a 10-day family ski trip to Idaho and Utah and took only my phone. Honestly, it was fabulous. I think it’s helpful to time a computer-free vacation with my clients’ likely holidays, so I’m trying it again in August, and I’ve already booked a two-week Europe trip where I plan to take only my phone.
• Make at least some progress on a literary translation. See above: my idea for a public-domain book translation.
• Dream goal: Work a little less and earn more. Hey, it has to exist as a dream first, and I’ve also realized that sometimes, working more hours is a result of my own sloppy processes. Example: I recently paid my web developer to automate the Training for Translators registration system, and honestly I should have done this five years ago. So, pie in the sky, I’d like to do less busy work, focus more on the work I really enjoy, and earn 150K. There you go, that’s my dream.

Again, I know it was a really tough year for a lot of freelancers. I’m sharing these successes partially to give some hope, and partially to share what worked for me and help you replicate it for yourself. And whatever 2026 has up its sleeve, we’re in it together!

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