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I’ve long said that I’m really disciplined about tracking where my money comes from and goes to, but I’ve consistently failed at doing the same with my time. How much do I work? How much of that is billable? Where is all my time going? Honestly, who knew? Certainly not me! 

My issues have been:

• Forgetting to turn the timer off. This sounds basic, but I’m being honest: I was always leaving the timer running and ending up with “Accounting: 14 hours” in my time log. 
• Not really seeing the value. I think this was the bigger problem. 

What changed 

This is an unlikely shift, so stick with me here. In June, I took a couple of classes through the American Literary Translators Association summer course series. Both were great, and I particularly enjoyed “How to make a living as a literary translator,” taught by Julia Sanches. In that class, Julia showed screenshots of her Toggl dashboard and talked about the value of seeing where her time goes, plus the ability to calculate an effective hourly rate on any project. 

Honestly, it was at that moment that I thought, respectfully, if a highly creative literary translator can do this and sees value in it, surely I can do it and surely there would be value in it. I decided to give it another try and really commit this time. 

Five weeks and what I’ve learned 

I revived my dormant Toggl account and got to it, creating projects for various tasks and clients that I regularly work on or for. This is an important part of the process, because you want to really think about what data you’re looking for. Do you want to measure billable and non-billable time? How much time you work for a specific client? Translating versus proofreading your own translations? 

Results so far:

• I hate it less than I thought I would. How’s that for a compliment??? Now that I’ve used it for five weeks, it’s become more of a routine and less of an irritation.
• If you bookmark Toggl on your toolbar, the icon turns purple when it’s timing. This helps me remember to turn it off. Additionally, turning it on and off just gets more automatic the more you use it.  
• Toggl helps me remember to take breaks. For better or for worse, you can’t pause a timing session, you can only turn it off. This is kind of annoying because you have to start a whole new session, but on the positive side, it tells me how long I’ve been sitting (currently 29 minutes which means it’s about time to walk around for a few minutes). 
• Just like looking at your financial data, you’re bound to find some surprises. I’ve always said that most of us can name our top three clients. But what about the fourth and fifth? Or, even if you closely track your income and expenses (I do), some things will be higher or lower than you would have predicted. Last year I made almost $6,000 from book royalties. I’m not going to quit my day job and live off that, but it paid for some nice vacations! And I spent more than $7,000 on subscription-based software (Zoom, Thinkific, Gusto, QuickBooks, web hosting, Google Workspace, podcast hosting). If I add up that and my office rent ($500/month, so $6,000 a year), it’s more than I earned in my entire first year of freelancing! Time tracking is likely to give you some shockers as well.
• One shocker for me: At least in the summer, I work less than I would have expected. Partially, this is expected, because conference interpreting drops off a lot in the summer, and even court interpreting slows down because a lot of people are on vacation. I’m really interested in getting some averages over time: how many hours a week I work, how much of that is billable, etc. It’s already kind of fascinating! 

The takeaway: try it!

I’m too new at time tracking to have any big-picture insights, and I feel like July and August are very skewed because I’m doing less translation and interpreting, and more of my own stuff.  For example, in other months this year I’ve interpreted for week-long conferences, where I would have had 30+ hours of just interpreting. I think it will be at least October until I can draw some meaningful conclusions. But in the meantime, I’ve already learned a lot.

My immediate takeaway: try time tracking (using Toggl, Clockify, or just your phone time and a spreadsheet) if you want to see where your time is going! 

“Help! How do I find the time to market??” 

Here’s another question I often get from readers (the last one was “Help! I lost my biggest client with no warning!”). How do I find time to market, when I’m already really busy with work?? 

Because everyone’s brain works differently, let’s look at this from a bunch of viewpoints:

1. Do you really not have time to market, or do you just hate it so much that you’ll do anything to avoid it?? I say this because a) lots of freelancers will outright admit this; and b) on the current T4T survey, by far the most common response to “How do you feel about marketing your freelance business?” is “I know I need to market more, but I can’t make myself do it.” So first, there’s that: maybe you really don’t have time, and maybe you “don’t have time.”
2. Do you have 15-30 minutes? I also think that a lot of people “don’t have time” to market because they’re thinking of a big block of time. “I’m going to clear my schedule and work on marketing all day on Tuesdays.” Some of us can do this, but most cannot. Nearly every student I talk to, who’s made a big marketing breakthrough this year, they’ve done it through small, consistent marketing increments rather than one massive push. 
3. If you really, really, don’t have time, are your rates too low? If you have to translate or interpret 40 hours a week in order to meet your income goals, it doesn’t surprise me that you have no time to market. The key here is to set an income goal that you can meet in about 25 billable hours (not working hours, billable hours, or hours in which you generate income) per week. 
4. Do you know your productivity tendency? I’ve talked before about Gretchen Rubin’s Four Tendencies framework: why you do (or don’t do) the things you do (or don’t do). I’m an Upholder; a rule-follower in the extreme, so I make a rule related to marketing. But I think most of us can benefit from this rule: “Market First.” Take care of *your* business before you take care of your clients’ businesses. If I have to interpret really early in the morning, I market after that, but otherwise I do it first thing. 
5. Are you being too vague? Maybe you’re paralyzed by a lack of specifics: “work on marketing for 30 minutes” feels amorphous. Instead: nail it down. “Monday, nudge two dormant clients. Tuesday, send five LinkedIn connection requests to potential new clients. Wednesday, e-mail two potential new clients. Thursday, follow up with two potential new clients.” 
6. Can you make marketing hard to avoid? Keep a list of next marketing steps where you can see it. Defeat analysis paralysis, because you’re looking at “Respond to new LinkedIn connections.” “Follow up with XYZ.” 
7. Are you in maintenance mode? If you’re currently meeting or exceeding your income goals, you may not need to be actively marketing, but you can’t get out of the Always Be Marketing habit. It’s too easy to never pick it back up again, but you can be doing maintenance activities like posting on LinkedIn, attending a client-side event online or in person, reading the publications your clients read, etc. 
8. Do you need templates? This really helps me. There’s nothing worse than blank page syndrome when you’re writing marketing e-mails (my preferred way to market to direct clients). Instead, I keep a Google doc of all the marketing e-mails I’ve sent this year, and I’ll customize them only slightly; so much better than starting from scratch.

I hope these tips are helpful if you’re feeling like you don’t have time to market!

The end of the school year! 

Greetings, T4T community! Well, here we are at the end of the “school year,” wrapping up with today’s content marketing class. I’m grateful to all 5,007 newsletter subscribers, and to the 1,254 (!!) of you who took T4T classes in the first half of the year. 

What’s on tap? First, a couple of self-paced classes in August, while I write the 20th anniversary edition of How to Succeed as a Freelance Translator. Then we’ll dive into a new school year in mid-September, and I’m also launching a T4T Plus tier (don’t worry, the free newsletter isn’t going anywhere!) for those who want some mentoring and targeted mini-courses. Whatever the second half of 2026 has in store, we’re in it together! 

But first, this week’s topic:

“Help! I lost my biggest client with no warning!” 

There are two kinds of freelancers:

• Those who have already lost a major client with no warning
• Those who will, at some point in the future, lose a major client with no warning 

Here’s how I was brutally introduced to this reality, back in about 2010

My big direct client at that time: a private university in France. They had international programs taught in English, into which they accepted students who spoke not a word of French. For that population, the school had to translate absolutely everything: how to register for classes, find a place to live, eat in the school cafeteria, get on the Wi-Fi. 

I loved their work, they paid well, and they were a high-volume client, with predictable peaks of work around the start of the new school year. 

Until I opened up my e-mail one morning, to this. “Hello Corinne! Thanks so much for all of your work for us over the years, we’ve really enjoyed the collaboration. Just wanted to let you know that we’ve hired a new communications specialist for our office. That person is bilingual in French and English and has also worked as a translator. She’ll be handling our translation needs from now on, but we’ll certainly keep you in mind if any additional needs arise.” 

And with that one e-mail, there went a significant percentage of my income, and a huge amount of my business confidence. 

Now what??

These days, lots of translators are getting a version of this e-mail, but the replacement is AI, not a bilingual communications specialist. LinkedIn is exploding with some version of this story: big client disappears overnight…now what? 

This led me to five observations:

1. When you have a dominant client, acknowledge the risks and benefits. Benefit: consistent work, less administrative overhead, getting to know their people and processes. Risk: A quarter, or half, or three quarters of your income disappears with one e-mail. A dominant client may be the right thing for you, but you need a business savings account that’s commensurate with the level of risk. Unscientific calculation: figure that it’s going to take you a month of marketing for every 10% of your income that this client represents, and round up. If they’re 25% of your income, figure that you need three months reserves in savings in case they dump you. 
2. After you get dumped, decide *right then,* before you start marketing to new clients, what percentage of your time/income you’re willing to give to one client in the future. Personally, I’m hesitant to give one client more than 25% of my time, or to have their work represent more than 25% of my income. But “no more work than you can afford to lose overnight” is a good guideline as well. 
3. Huge thanks to my past business coach Treasa Edmond for these next two; versions of which she wrote about it her most recent newsletter. Think about how clients are buying now, not how they bought in the past. The way you sold translation services even a year ago is really different from now, and really, really different than how you sold pre-ChatGPT. Because…
4. Treasa also pointed out that strategy and implementation are becoming way more important than pure execution, or what Ed Gandia calls “order-taking.” Lots of clients are (sadly) totally happy with a “good enough” translation that they got for free from ChatGPT. It’s harder to compare you to ChatGPT if you’re selling more than words. You have to emphasize the results and benefits of your work. In today’s content marketing class, guest instructor Lee Densmer suggested using wording like, “I help clients avoid costly and embarrassing mistakes when entering the German market.” “I make sure that your brand voice comes through in Japanese.” 
5. The hardest, and perhaps the most important: really, really try to embrace this as an opportunity to reinvent. Losing a big client can be a huge financial hit, and a huge blow to your confidence, and it also gives you a clean slate. You don’t have much to lose, so think about what you’d absolutely love to be doing. What kind of work would put you in a financial position where you’ve got six months to a year of savings, ready for the next time this happens? 

I hope these tips are helpful! Have a great week and I’ll be back in touch in a bit with some information about self-paced classes in August. 

Greetings, subscribers! I hope all of you in the U.S. had a great Fourth of July weekend!

I’m writing this on July 2 before taking the long weekend off, and as of now there are four spots left in the July session of Direct client research lab, my class that gives you personalized direct client marketing help. Registration is $195, all past sessions have sold out, and registration is open until July 9 or when all of the spots are taken! 

Registration is also open for this month’s master class; I’m really looking forward to guest instructor Lee Densmer’s tips on Breaking into the content writing and content strategy market. She’ll teach us how to use our translation and subject-matter skills as a starting point for offering writing services, perhaps even to your existing clients! Registration is $75 and the live class is on Tuesday, July 21. 

2026: The halftime report!

Well, here we are at the mid-point of 2026. Kind of crazy, but it’s a good opportunity to look at how things are going, what’s working, what’s not, and where we’re headed for the second half of the year. 

First, a few reminders! Lately I’ve been really enjoying Amelia Hruby’s podcast Off the Grid, and her approach to talking about money and income as a freelancer. Remember that:

• My money situation is about me, not about you. If you find it helpful to read about other freelancers’ income profiles, read on! If it stresses you out and makes you feel bad about yourself, stop here! 
• People will have different reactions to my income report, ranging from “How do you even spend all of that money??” (actual quote from someone on LinkedIn), to “That’s it??? Shouldn’t you be earning more than that??” 
•   I talk about my income because I teach other freelancers how to make more money, and I want to show that it’s possible to earn six figures as a solopreneur in the language business, without working crazy hours or outsourcing a ton of work. That’s my motivation; and I think that in the spirit of transparency, if I’m going to tell you that this is possible, I need to show you how I do it. 
• I tend to consider three factors when I do this analysis: how much I earned, how much I enjoyed the work, and how life is going in general. That might serve as a jumping-off point for your own analysis! 

The first half of 2026, by the numbers 

As I wrote about in my 2025 year-end wrapup post, last year was my highest-earning year in 23 years of freelancing. Finally, I reached the freelance equivalent of a six-figure income (which I would estimate to be about 140K). And yet, I did it partially by doing what I tell everyone else not to do: working slightly too much, having a scarcity mindset, and sacrificing time for my creative interests. 

I also realize that complaining about having too much work is a privilege. When I finished my conference interpreting Master’s five years ago, my dream was to interpret maybe 50 days a year. In reality, last year I interpreted about 180 days, and this year will be somewhat less (by choice), but still well over 100 because I’m already at 79 total. So I don’t want to come off as a whiner who doesn’t appreciate what she’s got. I love my work and I feel fortunate to be doing so much of it. 

 In the first half of 2026:

• I earned US $68,000 after subcontracting. If you’ve read these posts before, you know that when I say “I earned…,” I mean the total amount, minus what I paid out to my guest online course instructors. 
• Of that, $38,000 was from direct language work (interpreting, translating, and writing), and $30,000 was from teaching, writing, and consulting. 
• As compared to the first half of 2025, I did slightly more court interpreting, slightly less conference interpreting, slightly more interpreting for direct clients, slightly less translating for direct clients, and a lot more writing for direct clients 

This is not at the level I was earning last year. I’m guessing I’m going to end this year between 130 and 135K, but my only hard and fast goal is to earn more than 125K. And:

• Life feels good. This is what’s most important to me. I’m on a pretty constant quest to earn more money, because I think that as freelancers, we have a lot of “under” going on. Undervaluing our services, undercharging for them, underestimating what we’re capable of. I’d really like to have a 200K year at some point. Probably not this year, but I have some new ideas for the future that may get my income to that level. 
• As planned, I’m working less by choice. So far this year, I’ve taken two 10-day blocks where I worked an hour a day or less. One was a true vacation (family ski trip in January) and one was my daughter’s university graduation and job move. And I’ve got a two-week true vacation coming up in late August/early September. I’ve also been doing less “working for the sake of working” and allocating more time to my creative interests. I’m happy! 
• I’m feeling more confident about my own resilience. Guess what, the techniques that I teach to all of you actually work, because I landed a large new client through a cold-pitch e-mail about six months ago. This gave me confidence that if I were to lose a major client, I could find a new one to replace them. 

What next? 

Goals for the rest of the year:

• Conference interpreting work slows way down in the summer, so I’m devoting most of August to writing the 20th anniversary edition of How to Succeed as a Freelance Translator
• I’m working on an Interpreter Basic Training class for T4T. This will take a while to put together. Maybe launching in September? 
• I recently took two literary translation classes (yay for ALTA’s summer series!) and I have a book in the public domain that I want to get going on translating 
• I’m finally committing to time tracking!! This has been a big gap in my business data for a long time. I time-tracked at the end of 2024 when I did individual business coaching, and haven’t logged on to Toggl since. Until today, friends! It’s running right now, telling me that so far today, I’ve spent 73 minutes on e-mail and administrative work, and 21 minutes revising this newsletter. I’m also using Toggle as a de facto Pomodoro timer, where I watch it count up to 25 minutes on a specific task and then take a break. 

The bigger picture

No question, the language business has been on a serious rollercoaster ride since the arrival of ChatGPT. And I still believe that there is a lot of really good work out there for us: the key is to adapt, when most of us would rather keep doing what we’ve been doing. 

Most of us also don’t deal that well with situations where multiple conflicting things are true at once.

I’ve talked to a good handful of established translators who I really respect, and who are Just Done. As in, “I’m starting school in September to become an X-ray technician.” “My husband’s family owns a vacation rental business and I’m going to work for them.” While simultaneously, I’ve heard things like, “A year ago I was ready to give up; today I worked for four different clients.” “Pursuing direct clients was really, really hard at first, and now I’m happier and earning more money than at any time in my freelance career.” 

It’s possible. I’m not here to tell you that adapting and reinventing are easy or comfortable, but I’m here to tell you that you can do it. 

That’s it! Over to you! Hopefully this helps you with your own analysis, and you can respond and tell me how it’s going if you want to.

In episode 27 of the Training for Translators podcast, I talk about how to handle turning down work, when to “quit” a client, and the need to have a trusted colleague to back you up. You can listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or right here!

This episode was inspired by a question from a student in my online course alumni group, and I then wrote a LinkedIn post about it.