How would you scale freelance activity?

Hey there!

First of all I want to say a big thanks to the community for all the great threads. This forum is a goldmine.

My Internet journey started two years ago (back when I was still a student) as a freelancer translator.
I'm currently making about $1 000/month and I'm slowly but surely organizing my work and my clients. Starting to love the freelance life! Unfortunately, I still don't earn enough to make a living out of it.
I was not even making more than $300 a month before quarantine and I can say for sure people are right when they talk about the importance of efforts.

My main objective would be to reach about $2 500/month in 2021.
To reach this goal I plan to keep on working with my current clients for the translation projects but I'd also like to develop other skills to avoid routine and diversify.

I'd like to know what would you guys do to maximize profits? My current translating activities take about 25-30h/week and it would be difficult to work twice as much to earn the double.
I find it difficult to get paid more for translation projects as the competition is getting bigger with other freelancers. It's actually difficult to charge more in general.

Would you go for other skills?
Would copywriting be a nice alternative?
How would you scale the activity?
Something else?

I'm pretty sure I could write decently but I don't know where to start to gain some experience as a french copywriter.

Thanks in advance for your help/tips/ideas!

One advice I can give for all people in a similar situation: don't give up and keep on working! Results will always come sooner or later

Hire a virtual assistant and focus on getting sales.

FUTUR TIM said:

Hire a virtual assistant and focus on getting sales.

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Could you please provide a bit more details about this? The virtual assistant would search the contracts and the only thing I'd need to do is to translate?

Cryptology said:

more details about this

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It is quite the opposite.

You would need to find clients, the virtual assistant would do the translations.

I will have a look at it. I'm afraid I couldn't find enough clients though. Thank you for the idea!

Cryptology said:

Could you please provide a bit more details about this? The virtual assistant would search the contracts and the only thing I'd need to do is to translate?

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Find VA from third world country, so you can pas the jobs. With your current income. You can easily hire 5-10 full time worker depending on the task. If you don't understand star a jv to find someone to help you upscale it.

Thanks guys. I'll try to see how a JV can turn out.
Any other ideas?

I agree with the VA suggestions. Anything you can do to outsource the prospecting or the work itself should be considered.

Quick question: What methods worked best for finding new translation projects? I'm thinking about doing some Russian/English translation.

Rynoxoxo said:

I agree with the VA suggestions. Anything you can do to outsource the prospecting or the work itself should be considered.

Quick question: What methods worked best for finding new translation projects? I'm thinking about doing some Russian/English translation.

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Sorry, I didn't see your previous message.
I'd say go for the biggest freelance platforms. Fiverr and Upwork.

Cryptology said:

Sorry, I didn't see your previous message.
I'd say go for the biggest freelance platforms. Fiverr and Upwork.

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Target PPH and cold pitching alongside.

HustleTong said:

Target PPH and cold pitching alongside.

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What do you exactly mean by "cold pitching" please?

Are you on LinkedIn a translator I know picks up a fair bit of work from networking on there...

The other avenue I would go down is to start making your self an "expert" on the subject. So id start to write blog posts about having multilingual sites / strategies if you are selling into other countries not to mention the important of using it for regional or local seo.

Id even go as far as looking at any issues that might arise if you use google translate to translate some sentence that can mean something totally different without using the correct phrasing maybe? Take welsh for example google does an OK job at translating stuff but does not really include the mutations on words which can make a translated sentence sound stupid...

I think once you start going down that route you then need to get tweeting and joining various groups outside of your comfort zone (not sure if #Ecomchat) is still a thing on twitter but you could start to introduce your self into that circle you never know who might come to you..

I think until you build a name for your self as the go to translator for "insert a specific niche maybe (like ecommerce)" networking is going to be key to you growing and getting your name out there.

My last question would be what's your living costs like if you are bringing in $1000 and can't make a living... or maybe your pricing structure is a little off?