It can be uncomfortable to talk about money when it comes to raising your rates, and freelancers may fear scaring your hard-earned clients off. Unfortunately, inflation is something to include in your business model because it affects daily business and living costs.
Read MoreStrategies for raising your freelancing rates due to inflation
What is the ground floor in your career?
Look around any major world city and you’ll see plenty of high-rise buildings, of varying shapes and sizes. But however hard you look, you’re unlikely to spot a single building that has no ground floor – an edifice that just hovers in the sky.
Commenting in forums brings attention to your profile
For years, ProZ.com's translation industry forums have been a place for open discussion on topics related to translation, interpreting and localization. The topics are always an interesting read, they are often entertaining, worthy of hours of your time for education, and an opportunity to engage with the world's largest community of language professionals.
Read MoreA web widget is an independent application that can be embedded into a web-page, blog, or profile on a social media site and that will enable the display of information (your client feedback) or the call for an action ("Follow me").
Read More8 freelancer profile photo tips
If you are a freelancer, you must choose a freelancer profile photo. It is a big decision to make as it is one of the primary draws to your freelancer profile. Your photo must inspire trust and professionalism to entice high-quality clients.
Here are 8 freelancer profile photo tips to help you make the right photo choice.
Strategies to stand out on freelancer websites
There are millions of freelancers out there, and over 1 million registered at ProZ.com, likely with thousands within your language pairs; how can you compete? One of the top methods successful freelancers use to create a viable business is by creating a standout profile on freelancer websites.
How do they do this? Here are some strategies for standing out from the crowd.
Read MoreGet these 3 friends to review your professional profile
How much time have you spent improving your profile? Being critical of yourself it not easy for everyone. Do you need help? Get 3 friends to review your profile, but choose 3 different kinds of friends to review your profile to get more results. Find a friend in the language industry, a friend who hires people in any line of work, and a friend who loves you no matter what.
Goodbye 2020! See top 10 ProZ.com blog posts this year
Of the 150 blog posts written by ProZ.com site staff in 2020, it is only fitting that a blog post about the disease that defined 2020, COVID-19, topped the list of most read blog posts. Other popular posts included those about how to position yourself for jobs, ways to improve profiles, explanations of some site features and the most popular from the translation postcard series.
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In the recent International Translation Day event at ProZ.com, Daniel Coria took part in a "How to get more clients" panel (along with Martina Russo and Stephen Rifkind). One concept that Coria mentioned, that of "skill stacking", definitely struck a chord with ProZ.com Head of Training Paul Urwin.
Translator and globetrotter: Elena Romero
The first thing that strikes you about Elena Romero is how relaxed she is. Not to mention her easy-going and fluent English. Surely it can’t all be because she spent two years in London in her early 20s? But dig a little deeper and you see why: Elena spends her life travelling, much of it in English. Having left the narrow confines of her small town in the Canaries (ironically enough, a destination coveted by most of the world), she has roamed extensively – in Europe and SE Asia in particular, and counts Bali among her favourite places of all.
Portrait of an Entrepreneur: Yassine El Bouknify in Morocco
Ask Yassine El Bouknify what he enjoys about being a freelance translator and he responds without hesitation: the chance to work with other professionals and clients; the mobility bundled up with the job, and the ability to choose who he works for. In short, being his own boss. Just two years into his career, he’s obviously understood what makes freelance life tick.
ProZ.com offers a free webinar on meeting clients. The webinar is offered to help members get the most out of the tools available through the site. Attend an upcoming webinar to get the most out of ProZ.com and meet more clients.
The “Meeting clients at ProZ.com” webinar is moderated by María Florencia Vita of ProZ.com. It is part of the training available at ProZ.com.
Read MoreHow to write an effective job quote
As a freelance language professional on ProZ.com, there are many ways for you to find work. The vast majority of the workload that flows through the site comes from clients searching the Translators Directory or ProZ Find, so a good ProZ.com profile is a must to meet new clients through the site.
Read MoreWhat is SEO and what is it for?
SEO, short for search engine optimization, is a cluster of practices and techniques for increasing the quality and quantity of visits of a website or a web page by targeting search engine users. Over half of all website traffic comes from organic search —that means, traffic from search engines that you aren’t paying for. In Google alone, 63,000 searches are conducted per second.
SEO settings affect not only how you show up on ProZ.com, but how (and if) you appear on search engines.
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New feedback card widgets for ProZ.com Plus subscribers
Do you have your own website? Now, if you're a Plus subscriber, you can show your visitors the feedback you've received from clients and colleagues on ProZ.com without ever having to leave your page.
"WWA" (Willingness to Work Again) feedback is a ProZ.com feature that provides translators, interpreters and other service providers with a means of requesting, collecting and displaying in their profiles feedback from outsourcers and colleagues with whom they have worked.
The translator feedback page provides a dedicated interface to those willing to request or provide translator feedback, and with this widget, you can embed your WWA feedback card on your own website. You can find it under the Tools menu at the top navigation bar of the site:
ProZ.com's web widgets allow you to generate a code that you can easily add to your website. This widget will automatically be updated whenever somebody makes a WWA entry to your profile. Your site visitors and potential clients will be able to see your full feedback card, sorted by the most recent to the oldest entry.