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This Wednesday (February 23, 2022), join expert instructor Madalena Sanchez Zampaulo for a three-hour master class on using Google ads to market your freelance business. The live class runs from 12 noon to 3 PM New York time. Registration is $90 and includes the recording.

This master class will walk you through the process of how to set up and run Google ads if:
– Your goal is to attract new clients in a specific field or niche
– You don’t want to spend a lot of time creating new content to market your business
– You want to convert people who click to solid leads

In this step-by-step master class, you’ll learn how to:
– Purchase and set up a Google ad for your business
– Determine what keywords and copy will work best in your ad and on your clickthrough page
– Set up an effective landing page (the clickthrough page) that appeals to your target market and urges them to take an action (contact you, ask for a quote, etc.)
– Know when it’s time to make changes to your ad to improve your outcomes
– Test and adjust your ad to produce more warm leads

Past participants in Madalena’s courses say: 

“I’ve had a few opportunities to learn from Madalena and always profited from it! Her lessons are actionable, the advice she gives is highly personalized, and she is such a sweet and kind person to co-operate with. After listening to her webinar on LinkedIn for Translators and spending an hour following her suggestions, I’ve been contacted by a dozen potential clients – thank you!”

“Madalena’s mini-course on SEO through Training for Translators is fantastic! Among the best $50 I’ve spent on my business in years and worth much, much more. I know a little bit about SEO, but have already learned a ton and we are only on day 4. Thanks so much. Great content + delivery.”

“For the record, Madalena’s copywriting course is one of the best professional development courses I have taken in years. The content is top-notch and it has me dreaming of all kinds of new possibilities in my business.”

Full description and registration here!

Of all the reasons to lose a freelance project, perhaps the most logical is because the project doesn’t fall into your area of expertise. And perhaps the worst, in my opinion, is because you can’t figure out how to take the client’s money. I’ve never really understood why some freelancers are very rigid about how they want to be paid, and I accept the widest possible variety of payment methods. If a method costs me money to accept, I don’t pass that on to the client directly, but I build it into my rates, and chalk it up to the cost of doing business.

It costs money to make money. Almost everyone who takes a class with Training for Translators pays by credit card or PayPal, and I paid a whopping $4,700 in PayPal commissions in 2021. I’ve since added direct credit card payments via Stripe as an option, but the fees are about the same. In 2021, I had clients pay by:

• Check (yes, paper checks are still widely used in the US)
• Zelle/Chase QuickPay
• PayPal
• Venmo
• ACH
• Wise
• Bank to bank wire transfer
• Cash (no kidding; I translated a birth certificate for someone who came to my office with cash)

I hate paper checks. They’re slow, and they’re impossible to track. The expression, “the check’s in the mail” exists for a reason. I really try to guide clients away from paper checks, and I no longer use paper checks myself, but some clients simply will not pay any other way, so I continue to accept them.

Psychologically, my clients seem to pay much faster when they pay by an electronic method. For one of my law firm clients, I use PayPal.me, which allows you to create a one-click link that’s pre-set to the correct amount. This particular client, who wants to handle everything as fast as possible, loves the convenience of PayPal.me.

I’ve switched to using Wise for all of my outgoing international payments, for example to my online course instructors who live in other countries. I like Wise a lot. It’s easy to link it to your bank account, the fees are transparent, and you can see exactly how much the recipient will receive, before you send the payment. I also really like incoming transfers via Wise, because (for whatever reason), Wise’s international transfers post in my account as if they were a domestic ACH/direct deposit payment, so they’re free. This is compared with the $15 that I pay for an international bank-to-bank transfer, so it’s a big win.

Personally, I feel that it’s good to just ask clients what payment method they prefer, then if there’s a fee to you, build that into your rates. The only exception to this is that I require all individual clients to pay in full, in advance, before I do the translation, so I do not accept checks from individuals.

Two payment methods I’ve recently added are Venmo and Stripe. Venmo works well for individuals, as long as you’re positive that you’re sending money to or requesting money from the right person (I recommend always using the feature where you verify the last four digits of the person’s phone number). Just make sure that you have your Venmo privacy settings locked down, so that your contacts aren’t seeing all of the transactions you make on Venmo.

After using PayPal exclusively for a number of years, I just added Stripe as an option to pay for Training for Translators courses. Thanks to colleagues Madalena Sanchez Zampaulo and Meghan Konkol for their encouragement to try Stripe! Stripe allows people to pay directly by credit card without going through PayPal, their fees are reasonable, and the system to receive your money is similar to PayPal, where you link your bank account to Stripe for automatic transfers. I integrated Stripe in about 10 minutes using Woo Commerce Payments, because I’m already using Woo Commerce to process online course registrations.

I’m still hoping that someday, the US banking system will move into the 21st (or even 20th!) century and use IBAN numbers, or a system like SEPA, but until then, I’ll keep adding new electronic payment methods as good options become available.

Our first four-week class of 2022 starts on January 18, and early bird registration rates ($365 as compared to $405) end on Sunday, January 9. Join Jennifer Nielsen for a four-week course on Translating Official Documents, a class that’s gotten rave reviews from past participants: “Jennifer is a great teacher. After taking her course, I am confident that my official document translations are much better and reflect greater expertise. This course was really worth taking.“

Jennifer uses Spanish to English examples, but translators in all language combinations are welcome. The class includes two live sessions per week (recordings provided) and individual feedback on four homework assignments. Read the full description and register here!

Very, very sadly, our much-loved colleague and Training for Translators instructor Michèle Hansen passed away on December 5, 2021, after a recent cancer diagnosis. At the time of her death, Michèle was also the chair of the ATA Certification Committee and led the transition to the new online certification exam format. She and I (Corinne McKay) had worked together on international development translation projects for around 15 years, and she was a fantastic medical translation instructor, as well as a genuinely kind and generous person and friend. I am shocked and saddened by her sudden death, having just seen her smiling, laughing, and in great spirits at the ATA conference at the end of October.

Michèle was a student in my translation business classes years ago, and she found her niche in attending client-side conferences as a direct client marketing tool. After transforming her own translation practice, she generously wrote a guest post for my blog, and then was a guest on Speaking of Translation. It’s hard to believe that Michèle is no longer with us, may her memory be a blessing.

Off topic, but perhaps of interest to readers of this blog, since you’re all language and culture nerds!

Last month, I had opportunity to travel to the Navajo Nation (the largest Indian reservation in the US) with RezDawg Rescue, the organization that my family and I foster cats (and occasionally dogs!) for. We’ve fostered 50 animals in the past 22 months for RezDawg, and the bulk of them have been stray or surrendered animals from the Navajo Nation and the Four Corners area in general (for those outside the US, the Four Corners is where the four “square” states in the West — Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, and Arizona– meet). I’ve never been to that area, so I was excited when RezDawg decided to sponsor a volunteer-staffed vaccination clinic on the Navajo Nation. I’m not a medical person at all, but “civilian” volunteers were needed to do paperwork and take payments, so I signed up.

One aspect of this that’s not off-topic: I knew that we were likely to encounter a lot of Navajo speakers on the trip, so I (kind of/sort of) prepared by taking the Duolingo basic Navajo course. Not surprisingly, Navajo (perhaps best-known in the US as the language used by code talkers in World War II) is a really, really hard language for an adult native English speaker to learn. However I managed to learn hello, goodbye, thank you, cat, and dog, which came in very handy!

Our group of volunteers (including three civilians, one veterinarian, and one vet tech) headed from Colorado to Grants, New Mexico. Grants is about a nine hour drive from where we live, and is one of the two “border towns” (the other being Gallup) for the eastern portion of the Navajo Nation. We were there for a week, and it was a truly amazing experience in all kinds of ways.

Each day, we set up the drive-up vaccination clinic at what’s called a chapter house, basically a small community center. On three of the days, I worked the intake station, taking down the age and health information of the animals, and on two days, I worked at the exit station, taking payments and distributing dewormer and flea/tick treatment. We vaccinated around 500 dogs and 50 cats, and brought back around 20 strays and surrenders (including four pregnant mom dogs and a litter of kittens) to find new homes in Colorado.

Most people drove to the clinic in pickup trucks, with their outdoor/herding/guard dogs in the back, and smaller dogs (lots of chihuahas!) in the cab, and sometimes cats on the dashboard or in carriers or pillow cases in the back. Note for cat people: a pillow case actually makes a pretty great improvised cat carrier! We vaccinated animals for 6-8 hours a day, so the days were more like 8-10 hours with setup and cleanup; a lot of work, but the people who came to the clinics were very grateful for the free and low-cost service, since there is not much access to vet services on the reservation. We also gave out hundreds of bags of donated food, collars, leashes, collapsible water bowls, toys, and other items that can be difficult or expensive to find in such a remote area.

I was (honestly/naively) shocked by the living conditions on the Navajo Nation. In the words of one of the local volunteers I worked with, the Navajo Nation is essentially, “A third world country trapped inside the US.” Here’s some of what I learned: 300,000 people live on the Navajo Nation. Almost half are unemployed, about half live below the federal poverty line, about half don’t finish high school, 7% have a college degree, about a third live without piped running water (we saw this everywhere we went; people have enormous water tanks that go in the bed of a pickup truck, and they come fill them up at the chapter house water distribution points), and about a third live without electricity.

The hard part is, what’s the solution? Unlike many reservations, the Navajo Nation is actually on the Navajo ancestral land, and many people live in extended families. Despite the rough conditions, many people don’t want to leave. There is no individual land ownership (the tribes communally own the land), so there is almost no asset capital or transfer of wealth from one generation to another. Basically: it’s complicated; after the admittedly limited experience of spending a week there, I don’t know what the answer is. Donating to reputable non-profits that work there is definitely helpful, and going there and volunteering is definitely helpful, and honestly I think that in order for things to change in any major way, it will take a huge push for awareness in the political and legal systems.

Before going to the Navajo Nation, I naively wondered why more educated Native Americans don’t work to at least demand enforcement of what the US government already agreed to and isn’t doing? Like the US government agreed to give the Sioux jurisdiction over the Black Hills “in perpetuity,” but in reality that meant “until we find gold there.” Why not at least demand enforcement of that? Again, complicated: Native Americans form about 2% of the US population, but only about 0.2% of attorneys and 0.4% of doctors are Native American. The whole horrible history of Indian boarding schools, some of which were active into the 2000s, means that there’s a lot of distrust of the educational system off the Rez (another thing I learned: everyone calls it the Rez, it’s not disrespectful) and very few tribal colleges have graduate or professional schools, so “get an education and work to change things” isn’t a simple solution either. Honestly I think the best thing is to go there and see it with your own eyes and talk to people, and at least admit that our country does this. Our country allows the people whose land we invaded to live like this, in a place where the rest of us are the immigrants. For me, it was a truly amazing experience and I’m hoping to go back.