Cross-cultural marketer and international sales specialist

Love Your Work, Love Your Life: Make it Happen as a Freelance Translator

by Cindy on October 26, 2008

Uniquely Cindy - Sunday Book Reviews

All of the book and product reviews here are usually totally unsolicited… spontaneous …and without affiliate links. These are books and products I share with close friends. This is an exception.

Ofer Tirosh, the founder of tomedes.com asked me to review his ebook Love Your Work, Love Your Life: Make it Happen as a Freelance Translator.  Tomedes is a company that will provide a platform for translation services for both translators and their customers.

This ebook was written for the freelance translator who is looking for some balance in a confusing life. Many freelance translators love their job, but hate the bidding process and managing clients. Tirosh’s ebook helps set some guidelines that are intended to make the translators life a bit easier. The hints that are included in this will be very useful to anyone who is a freelance translator, and a lot of the ideas can be adapted for any freelance work.

Where Is The Money?

One of the first concerns when working in translations is the money. How much to charge, when to bill and how to collect from clients.

Tirosh sets easy to follow guidelines, and offers different options to question of setting rates. The most important bit of advice is that, like interest rates and exchange rates,  there is no reason for a translators rates to be fixed. He defines the parameters that can lead to an increase or decrease in the cost of an assignment. The lists of different parameters are job related, time constraints, the client requirements, financial concerns and the translators own abilities.

These are some of the guidelines that I mentioned above that can be used by any freelance writer. In a later chapter he also covers the best online payment methods.

Managing A Freelance Business

Managing a freelance business can be the the most difficult part working freelance.  Tirosh covers time management, setting priorities and realistic deadlines. Good rules, again for any freelancer.

Growing a translation business and dealing with clients can be difficult (and clients can be difficult). Tirosh has pointers that will help you make decisions about both. Unfortunately, dealing with difficult clients is the price you pay for working freelance, but his tips will help make the decisions necessary.

Just don’t take difficult clients, probably the best advice that a person can give. In this section Tirosh also brings up a very good reason to work with a company like his. As a freelancer you run the risk of a client not paying. Why work if the client is not going to pay? He actually explains when it is easier to just not get paid - sad but true.

This ebook should be read by anyone considering starting in the freelance translation business. It is full of useful tips that will help make decisions about what the decision you are about to make.

Here are a few more Uniquely Cindy Sunday Book Reviews:
- Content Rich By Jon Wuebben
- Online Competitive Intelligence
- Influencer: The Power To Change Anything
- How to Win Sales & Influence Spiders By Catherine Seda
- Mastering Online Marketing By Mitch Meyerson
- How The Internet Works By Preston Gralla
- Dotcomology The Science Of Making Money Online By Stone Evans
- Bit Literacy On Managing Your To Do’s
- Bit Literacy Tips On Managing Email
- Bit Literacy Tips on Managing Your Media Diet
- Bit Literacy Productivity in the Age of Information and E-mail Overload By Mark Hurst
- The Ultimate Web Marketing Strategy By Ed Rivis
- The Culturally Customized Web Site By Nitish Singh And Arun Pereira
- Letting Go Of The Words - Writing Web Content That Works By Janice Redish
- Landing Page Optimization By Tim Ash

And read even more in the…
Get International Clients International Sales Road Map

Multichannel marketing

Guide To Multichannel Marketing

Do you know how to communicate with different countries?
This guide shows you how

International web marketing

Guide To International Web Marketing

Do you know how to pull all of your different international marketing pieces together?
This guide shows you how

Get International Clients Cindy King is a Cross-Cultural Marketer and International Sales Specialist, with over 25 years field experience in international business development.
Learn how you can get more international sales

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