How I became a freelancer and where it has led me...

It's all here, in my new interview to freelancermap.com. I am grateful for a chance to share my experience and some tips with the subscribers of this wonderful website. The interview was an interesting process. I've been kind of silent here, because now being only a part-time freelancer, I can't decide what to write about. There are a couple posts in my drafts, but I've been hesitating about publishing them. So big thanks to Doreen for showing me that my experience can still be valuable for others. Dear Doreen, I promise, I will keep this blog living and active!

So, things you will learn from this interview include:
1. How I became a freelancer (though you might already know that part ;-))
2. Why freelancing is a part-time business for me now and how that transition actually happened.
3. What do I do to find new clients and keep them :-)
4. Some marketing and success tips from me.

And of course, I will be happy to read your stories!
Here's what you can do:

You can write a post in your blog about how you became a freelancer, where that decision has led you and where you are now, and post a link to it in comments underneath.
Or you can contact me and write a guest post!

I know one translator who eventually stopped translating and now is a fitness and lifestyle coach! Some other colleaguess who were active bloggers a couple years ago have now added services like copywriting, social media and content marketing. So being a freelancer and learning new things in order to grow your business sometimes produces quite unexpected results! For some colleagues, translation is that precious treasure which will always come first. And that's wonderful! We all know these people because they shape our industry. Are you one of those people? Or do you want to become one of them?

I am looking forward to hearing from you! Share your stories and let's learn from one another.

Clients vs translators: how do we show that we're honest?

This is a personal post, and I'd really like to hear the opinion of my colleagues about such situations and how to deal with them. My situation is kind of like the one described in Mox's blog . In December a new prospective client wrote to me asking about my availabiility for a new project. When I read the overall description of the project, I got really interested in it. But the client needed to know exactly how much time it would take and how much it would cost. No problem, just send me the text to look through or a part of it so I could get the gist of the style, level of complexity etc. In the reply that person just stated the wordcount, but there was no sample. I thought, maybe they didn't understand me. English is not my native language after all. In my reply, I stated the estimated time and cost based on the client's wordcount, but I repeated the request to see a part of the text. And then the person thanked me and ... disappeared.

15 interesting facts about the English language

I prepared this list for one of my English classes. And then it dawned on me that I can share it with you, too! So here are 15 facts about the English language that I find very interesting. Hope you do, too ;) Rudyard Kipling was fired as a reporter for the San Francisco Examiner. His dismissal letter said, "I'm sorry, Mr. Kipling, but you just don't know how to use the English language. This isn't a kindergarten for amateur writers." No language has more synonyms than English.

So you are a busy freelancer. How to keep your blog alive?

I decided to write this post thanks to my dear Twitter friend and colleague Sarai Pahla who mentioned once on Twitter that she honestly wonders how I find time for blogging regularly. Well, I am about to share my secret with you now. I am also going to share a couple tricks that help other blogging translators. Interested? Then read further.

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