One of the first agencies I ever picked up on
ProZ.com (via the
BlueBoard technique I mentioned earlier) is the only one I still work for today, ten years on, and now only around the time of the Cannes Film Festival.
At the beginning, when all my work was for agencies, they used to send me between €1,000 and €2,000 of work every month, which was fine as I was also picking up work (in lesser quantities) from a dozen other agencies at the time. But the other day I looked back through my yearly accounts to try and work out exactly how much they had paid me (given that my latest invoice to them during the recent Festival was for €3,400), and the total worked out at over €110,000 in ten years.
That all represents quite a return on that initial investment…
Oh and did I mention that I got taken on board after doing a free test? 😃
Sometimes the beginning of a relationship with a new client can seem unremarkable, unpromising, pretty much like all the others. It’s when you see things in terms of lifetime value that they really come into perspective.
Finding clients is a great start. Cultivating, maintaining and benefiting from them over the years is where the hard work, the quality and the consistency pay off…
Andrew Morris is the moderator of the
Translators and Interpreters (ProZ.com) group on facebook. The group numbers over 50,000 and is provided as a professional resource for those who work with language or who offer language services.