Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about the concept of choosing your hard, and I think it can be really useful to us as freelancers. Too often, we know what we need to do, but we struggle to force ourselves to do it, partially because we frame this as a choice between an easy thing […]
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To break out of the low-rate market, change these three things
Stop me if this sounds familiar: I really needed work, so I decided to take whatever came through the door. I decided that applying to mega-agencies/advertising on Fiverr/racing to the bottom on translation job boards was the fastest way to get full-time freelance work. But now I’m stuck; I have to translate 10-12 hours a […]
Continue ReadingThe importance of being intentional
A short but important thought about freelancing (and maybe about life in general, but that’s beyond the scope of this blog!): whatever you do in your freelance business, do it intentionally, not because you’re a) being passive or b) letting some external force dictate your decisions and then blaming the external force instead of yourself. […]
Continue ReadingVideo: translating for individual clients
I do a pretty brisk business translating for individual clients (anything from birth certificates through self-published books). It’s a niche that many agencies and freelancers avoid, so it can be a good niche to address if you’re interested. In this six-minute video, I give you some thoughts on what’s appealing about the individual-client market and […]
Continue ReadingOvercoming psychological barriers to success
This week, two blog posts on the psychology of freelancing caught my eye: this one from Get Rich Slowly, entitled “Knocking out the beliefs that hold you back” and this one from I Will Teach You To Be Rich, entitled “Success and the shrug effect” (and by the way, it’s not that I love blogs […]
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