As I mentioned in my post about episode 1 of the T4T podcast, the podcast is live! The first two episodes are available in Apple Podcasts or on Spotify. If you prefer to listen right here on the T4T website, here’s episode two, which is based on this blog post: four sources of potential direct clients.

Links mentioned in this episode:
–Devex, a news and jobs site for the international development sector
–Ed Gandia’s website, High-income business writing
–Ed Gandia’s e-book on e-mail marketing

As I’ve mentioned in my newsletter, I’ve been meaning (for a while) to start a Training for Translators podcast, for people who like their information in audio form. And what do you know, it finally happened! Episodes one and two are available in Apple Podcasts and on Spotify, or you can listen right here.

The podcast is pretty simple; it’s just me, reading and commenting on past posts from the Training for Translators blog. Episode one is based on this post, on the pros and cons of pricing your translation work (here we’re talking only about translation, not interpreting) by the word, by the project, and by the hour.

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This post is the basis for episode three of the T4T podcast! Listen to it in Apple Podcasts or on Spotify (the podcast is just called Training for Translators), or directly on the T4T blog, here.

Greetings, Training for Translators readers! The T4T “school year” is off to a great start, with an enthusiastic group of people in the four-week Getting Started course, and an excellent direct client marketing master class last week! Next up is Translating official documents from French to English, on October 7 (kind of a bonus class since I don’t do many language-specific things!) and then Aiming for six figures as a freelancer, on October 23.

This week’s topic: If you’re applying to agencies, expect to contact them two to six times before they send you work

But first…is it still worth applying to agencies? I thought you might ask that, so I wrote a blog post on that topic a few months ago; you can read it here.

Anyone applying to agencies has this fantasy: We send off an application to an agency, and they respond right away! “We have a 10,000-word project, just waiting for you!” “Are you booked for next week? We have a five-day conference that needs interpreters!” But it doesn’t usually work that way! Once in a while, perhaps, but typically things go more like this: We apply via the agency’s website, followed by radio silence, and we decide they don’t need us, and we move on.

Where do those online applications go?

It’s easy to think that online applications go to a black hole, but the reality is that they’re probably going to an agency staffed by well-meaning people who have other jobs. It’s rare that small or medium-sized agencies have a vendor manager or recruiter; typically those tasks are given to someone who already has another full-time job. Even at large agencies, the vendor manager(s) or recruiter(s) are probably focused on hard-to-find languages or specializations. If that’s you, you may get a response to your online application, but most of us will not. That doesn’t mean that this step is worthless, but the online application is simply the first step.

Here’s the truth: if you are applying “cold” to an agency (you aren’t being referred by another freelancer who works with them; this is always the best option), you’re probably going to have to contact them two to six times before they send you work.

What are the two to six contacts?

Here’s what I would suggest:

1. Apply via the agency’s website, unless you are looking only for specialized work that they may or may not need, in which case, contact them first. Here’s what I mean: if you’re a Spanish to English legal translator, just go ahead and apply, because there’s a strong chance that the agency provides this service. If you want to translate only for the museum sector, if you do Japanese conference interpreting, if you translate Tagalog to English, it’s worth starting with step three, because you want to make sure that the agency handles this type of work before you apply to them. Also, a pro tip: Use any available opportunity to show that you’re a human, when you fill out the application. If there’s a field called  “Additional information,” “Anything you want to tell us,” etc. never leave it blank. Add something like, “Thank you so much for the opportunity to apply as an English to German patent translator with [name of agency]. I look forward to hearing from you and hopefully working together in the near future.”
2. If you get any acknowledgement of receipt, other than an auto-responder, reply to it. If a human responds, even to say, “We’ve received your application and we’ll let you know if we need you,” respond back with something like the “Thank you so much…” message above. Also: nudge. Keep the ball rolling. “Please let me know if you need anything else from me.” “Please let me know what the next steps are.” “Please let me know when I can expect to hear from you about the testing process.” The person responding to you is incredibly busy and you’re one applicant among many, so you need to keep the process moving forward.
3. If you get no response to your online application, start looking for the agency’s staff on LinkedIn. Keep in mind the constraint that LinkedIn has recently imposed on personalized connection requests; in most cases, if you don’t have Premium, you’re limited to five personalized requests per month. You definitely want these connection requests to be personalized. Put the agency’s name into the LinkedIn search box, then click “People,” and you’ll find anyone with the agency’s name in their profile. Ideally, you want a vendor manager, recruiter, or project manager, unless the agency is really small, in which case it matters less who you contact. Send a connection request, with a simple message: “Hello Melissa, I hope you’re doing well! I recently applied for English to Japanese translation work via [name of agency]’s website; I’m just following up and inquiring about next steps.” You can write 300 characters and that’s 186 characters, so even with a short signoff and your name, it will fit.
4. At the same time, use any contact information that you can find on the agency’s website. E-mail their general info@ e-mail address if you can’t find anything else. Just keep plugging away until a human responds to you. Call them on the phone if you’re feeling brave.
5. Agencies all have mailing addresses! I’m a big fan of sending handwritten things in the mail, but that’s harder with so many people working from home. Still, the agency itself should have a mailing address that shouldn’t be too difficult to find, either on their website or in an association directory. For the cost of a card and a stamp, write something simple: “I recently applied for Italian to English scientific translation work via your website; I look forward to hearing from you and hopefully working together soon.” Enclose a business card. I know this seems kind of retro/shot in the dark, but go ahead and try it; it can’t hurt, and no one sends anything interesting in the mail these days.
6. Wash, rinse, repeat. Years ago, I gave a series of webinars for a translation agency, and the owner said something simple but really helpful: When you’re applying to agencies, keep following up until you get a yes or a no. With direct clients, you don’t want to be a pest, because you don’t know if they need you. Agencies need translators and interpreters, whether or not they need you specifically. Keep at it until the agency responds in some way: we need you, we don’t need you, here’s our testing process, here’s what else we need from you.

I personally could not meet my income goals translating (not interpreting) exclusively for agencies. I also have zero interest in editing machine translation, which is the direction that a lot of agencies have gone. And yet, there are still good agencies out there, or agencies that have larger budgets for specific projects. I hope that these techniques are helpful if you’re in the agency application cycle!

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Greetings, Training for Translators readers! I hope you’re all doing well! The first T4T class of the “school year” (Getting started as a freelance translator or interpreter, in the age of AI) has kicked off, and I’m excited for what the rest of 2024 has in store.

Direct client master class on September 18

This month’s master class, Marketing to direct clients and increasing your income, is on September 18. Registration ($75) includes the recording, and we’ll discuss doable ways to market to direct clients, and how to make sure you’re charging enough to reach your target income. Given the significant changes in the agency market in the past few years, for many freelancers, the time to market to direct clients is now. But if you’re new to the direct client market, it can be hard to know who to contact and what to charge. We’ll get you started in this two-hour class!

In other news…

• For the second year in a row, Ruth Gámez and Fernando Cuñado are running a September Spanish Marketing Challenge, using some of the materials from the T4T March Marketing Madness group, plus their own additions. This year’s challenge runs from September 16-30 and you can sign up for $49 or join their online community, in which case it’s free! 
• Mireya Perez interviewed me for her podcast, Brand the Interpreter. We had a lot of fun talking about business development for translators and interpreters, and you can listen to the episode here, or in your favorite podcast app!
• If you’re looking for in-depth business development help, Joe Lépine has three spots left in his two-month coaching program, Squeak to Roar. This is not an affiliate deal; Joe’s classes for T4T have gotten excellent reviews, and he reports that this program is “for introverted translators who hate marketing,” and it combines both group and individual coaching.

This week’s topic: Two mindset shifts that really help me

I often feel like success as a freelancer is half practicality and half mentality. Meaning, you can’t succeed as a freelancer without actually doing things to keep your business thriving, whether that’s marketing to better clients, attending professional development events, or keeping your technology setup updated. And you can’t succeed as a freelancer without the right mindset: if you believe that you’ll never work for better clients or earn more money, you’re probably right!

Today, let’s focus on mindset, with two mindset tips that really help me!

1: “Who should I be serving?”

This mindset shift really helps me figure out who I should be working for and who I should market to. It’s really easy to get discouraged about marketing in particular, if you view it as, “Here goes another round of spam to people who don’t want to hear from me anyway!” Instead, flip the script:

• Where can my skills be most useful?
• Who really needs my services, but can’t yet work with me, because they don’t know me?

I also don’t want to work with clients who don’t value what I have to offer; asking myself, “Am I truly serving this client’s needs?” is really helpful, because I can focus on clients who truly are the right fit. I also think that this treasure hunt mindset can make marketing a lot less onerous. Think about the service providers in your life who you truly love; even if they’re expensive, they save you so much time and hassle that you’re thrilled to work with them (my accountant, my website manager, and my landscaper are all in this category). Ask yourself, how can you be that kind of service provider to your clients? What would that mean? Who would you be working for if you focused primarily on where you can be useful?

2: Some clients can’t afford you, and that’s OK

This is a piece of wisdom I gleaned from my friend and colleague Steve Lank, who trained at MIIS and now works as the CEO of Cesco Linguistic Services. Many or even most of us react very negatively when a potential client tells us that our rates are too high for them. It doesn’t matter if you’re a freelancer or an agency; we tend to think that the problem is with us; we’re overpriced, we’re not competitive, our rates of out of line with market norms.

Years ago, I interviewed Steve about marketing to agencies, and he made the point that it’s much more correct, and more helpful, to reframe this as, some clients cannot afford us, and that’s OK. We all would love to have or do things in life that we can’t afford, right? As much money as I could ever have available to spend on travel, I could spend all of it and more. It’s not that the travel experiences I’d love to have are overpriced, it’s that it’s not in my budget to participate in all of them.

This mindset shift has really helped me; instead of anguishing over every client who thinks I’m too expensive, it’s a lot easier to think, “I’m not in their budget,” or “They need someone less expensive,” rather than that the problem is me, which it’s not.

This goes back to feeling confident about what you need or want to earn, which you can calculate using my Deciding what to charge spreadsheet. When you have confidence in your rates, it’s a lot easier to have confidence in the work that you turn down, because the client can’t afford you.

The freelance mindset is always a work in progress; I hope that these tips are helpful to you!

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Lots of freelancers wonder about whether it’s a good idea to expand your freelance business, or even turn it into an agency! Particularly if you’re in a situation where:

• Clients ask you for referrals to translators in other language pairs
• Clients need more work than you can do by their deadline
• You look at some of your agency clients and see room for improvement

Key questions to ask

This is a topic that I think about with some regularity! Although, to spoil the surprise, I’ve concluded that I have almost no desire to expand my business or become an agency. Why?

• I’m happy with the volume and quality of work I have right now; I make what I consider a healthy income on my own
• I don’t like being responsible for the quality of other people’s work
• I don’t want more constraints on my free time
• I don’t enjoy the management aspects of the business enough to want to expand them; mostly, I enjoy translating and interpreting

However, I don’t think that expanding your business is a bad idea. In fact, I think that, as most medium-to-large agencies move toward, or have already embraced, the high volume/low-margin work of machine translation with human editors, there’s actually an opening in the market for true boutique agencies, run by translators and interpreters who do some of the work themselves and subcontract some of the work to high-quality freelancers.

If this is something that interests you, I would mull over the following:

• Do you consistently have enough work that you could keep more people busy?
• Do clients consistently ask you for referrals to other translators and interpreters?
• Do you enjoy project management, client relations, potentially proofreading, and other tasks that go along with running an expanded freelance business or an agency?
• Would you enjoy expanding your freelance business into an asset that you could potentially sell at some point?

To me, here’s the kicker

Here’s what I bump up against, whenever I think about potentially expanding: quality work is not cheap. There are really only two ways to earn a profit margin on agency-type work:

1. Keep your rates the same as your freelance rates, and outsource work to good translators and interpreters who charge less than you do
2. Raise your “agency” rates above what you charge for your freelance work

To me, this is the hard part. Most people you’d really like to hire, probably charge about the same as you do. Sooooo, where’s the profit margin going to come from? Admittedly, there are ways to do this, such as:

• Find good, up-and-coming translators and interpreters who are at the beginning of their careers, actively looking for work, and willing to work for less than what you charge
• Find good translators and interpreters who might want to give you an attractive rate for a guaranteed volume of work; i.e. you’ll “retain” them for 5,000 words a week, or 10 hours of interpreting, regardless of whether you use the time

Still, make sure you think this through before you dive in!

 

My conclusion: No!

I’ve had a number of agency/quasi-agency ideas over the years. Maybe I should start an “only official documents” agency, or an agency that only does French to English international development? And, in the end, I decided against it, for the reasons I mentioned above. At the same time, I think that, particularly in the translation world, there’s a niche waiting to be filled. Hopefully these tips are helpful if you’re considering this for your own business!