You must cast a wide net when marketing your freelance translation business. Simply creating a beautiful, professional website is not enough! Building the website doesn’t mean that potential clients will automatically find you and the work will start flowing in. So how should you market your website? Should you be on websites such as UpWork, Craigslist, and Yelp? Let’s have a look at the pros and cons of these options.

Where Do Potential Clients Look for Translators?

As translators, it’s important to remember that most people know absolutely nothing about translation, and of course, this is not their fault. So, what would a potential client do, and where would they go, when they’re looking to hire a translator? Well, they’ll probably look in the same places that they look to hire other types of service providers. It may not be too appealing thinking that your client found both his gardener and his translator on Yelp, but the fact is that many translators do advertise on Yelp, and if your client is looking on Yelp then there’s every possibility that you’ll be the translator they find - or at the very least, you’ll beone of the translators they find. So, it doesn’t matter how we feel personally about this type of marketing strategy, what does matters is this: ‘Where are our potential clients looking for translators?’

Customer Reviews Are Important!

Another advantage of advertising on UpWork and Yelp is that they both allow and encourage customer reviews. Many people searching the Internet for products and services are looking for websites with customer reviews so they can determine other people’s thoughts and ideas on specific purchases they’ve made. Good online reviews inspire trust in potential clients. Most of us today, when looking for a service provider, regardless of whether it’s a medical practitioner or a translator, are searching online for user reviews before we consider employing someone’s services. And it’s true that, when we read positive reviews, we feel inspired to continue with our purchase.

When it comes to your website, it still a good idea to add testimonials to your translation website, but all potential clients will know that these have been placed by you because they are great reviews from your favorite clients. However, online reviews create a different story: they serve to provide the reader with a more realistic picture of the product or service on offer.

These Sites Have Great Advertising Power

Another advantage of marketing your translation services on these websites is that you can take advantage of their advertising power and their very high search engine rankings. It’s for this reason that we also believe that all freelance translators should have a profile on LinkedIn. It doesn’t cost anything to create a basic account, and when someone does a Google search for a translator or interpreter in a specific city in the United States, it’s highly likely that these sites will rank ahead of any individual freelance translator site.