How to get the first clients?

Maria Teresa Borges de Almeida wrote:

Just a word of advice: be very aware of scammers. Scammers love newbies. Be extremely careful if something is just too good to be true: huge jobs, payment in advance, cashier’s cheque…

Korana Lasić wrote:

If you have been here for 8 to 10 weeks, then you aren't doing anything wrong. This IS a numbers game. Keep at it and the results will come.

There's no telling, for me because I am from a different pair(s), how this newest unfortunate war, the inflation, and the threat of 'an apocalyptic' winter might be affecting the number of assignments in general in your pair. Having said that, it seems that these last few years it's always the wrong time to enter the freelance translation field, I, myself, joined in the first year of the pandemic though, and I'm very happy with my results.

You need to become a paid member. My only regret is wasting a whole year on being an unpaid member! It looks unprofessional and allows you only a fraction of visibility and access to jobs posted.

If I may, a word of advice? I appreciate that you are honest, I find that honesty and integrity are the only way to get quality people to collaborate with you, but there is honest and there is wide-eyed naive.

You shouldn't lie and falsely advertise, but you need to find a better way to sell yourself than 'I've literally got just a year of experience but at least I'm honest'. PMs and agencies read the forum and whilst they will too appreciate the honesty and integrity, you haven't shown any confidence that you can do this in your first post here, anything that would offset your lack of experience. You can do both, ask for advice and try to exude a bit more confidence in your ability to do this, if someone gave you a chance!

This is a business, you are no longer a student not quite an employee. Without stretching the truth, you could have simply focused on the fact that you've done 8 projects and have had years of training to acquire a degree that you've acquired rather than, well, I am a nice and honest person, now hire me.

In many ways the ability of other people on proz.com to advise you is limited because our experiences here greatly differ, so how you will sell the service that you know you can do is for you to figure out! It will be a process and 8 weeks is too short to get there, but perhaps more consideration can be given to the fact that you are now running a one woman business and less wide-eyed: 'Hello people of the forum, look at me, I am beautiful, young, and good but not sure what I'm doing here. (I can see that you are very much all these things, and it's only natural to be all those at the very begging of your career, but you are risking potentially getting torn to shreds if you will wear your heart on your sleeve like that in this business and on this site).

Get as many keywords attached to your profile and keep on keeping on, you've got this. Let us know in a year's time whether you are keeping the job or moving on, but do not give up unless you've spend more than a year trying to establish yourself on proz.com and learning the many ropes of being a translator and then a freelance one, and your own CEO and CFO.

If you can get a mentor, official or unofficial one, someone working in your pair and preferably as a freelancer themselves, that would be amazing, but it isn't crucial.

Good luck, Erica, you can do this. Do not let being cheap be your angle, and learn as soon as humanly possible. Work at this as many hours per day as you can, but don't forget to take care of yourself, your wellbeing as well.

Welcome to proz.com, there are worse job marketplaces you could have ended up at, namely all the other!

This is an odd 90s looking site that works! Mind you, maybe it only worked for me because I am a middle-aged gen Xer who is used to the way business is done here, but I honestly can say that for me it did work, and I wish you the same!

You should also know, I never stop selling myself in the business sense, not even when I write posts to try and help a newbie colleague, but I do only try and sell skills I do have, rather than lie or falsely advertise.

[Edited at 2022-11-10 21:51 GMT]

Erica Roncari wrote:



Thank you, I saw more than a couple horror stories here and in other websites. What about payment in advance, though? I thought some translators requested it, or at least 30%-50% of the final price, before working on a project.