You may have thought about creating a website, but then you may have pondered the costs, doubted its effectiveness, and perhaps you realised you don’t know what to write on it. So, first off, if you’re a freelance translator, should you have a website?
A website is not a CV.
The other day we asked the trainees to send us their CV. One of them asked me if she could send me a website she had made a few months earlier, instead of a CV. Well… a website isn’t a CV, is it? Although their intent may be similar – to attract clients – their method is different. A CV is something you send, and a website is something the client finds. One is read out of necessity – it’s supposed to be concise and have a standard format – and the other may be stumbled across, and can come in many forms and contain a lot of different information.
All in all, while you can have a creative CV, a website allows you to be much more creative. You can include information about you, your services, a portfolio, contact forms and even an online store, if you’re bold enough. (note: I’ve never seen a freelance translator website with an online store – it was just something that crossed my mind.)
So, should you create a website?
It may be hard to get clients this way because most translation agencies don’t use google to find translators. What’s more, end clients probably won’t find your website because it will be buried under all the other websites of big translation companies.
However, I must mention that, as a PM, a freelance translator who has a professional, well designed website is immediately on my radar. Why? Because there aren’t that many. And if that person spent the time and money it takes to create a good website, I can’t help but expect them to put the same amount of effort into my client’s translations.
Therefore, a website may not bring you new clients by itself, but it could surely boost your applications and be a good way of presenting your services. Should you have one? My personal opinion is that marketing is never too much and, considering the costs, a website is a good marketing tool.
The costs of a website
There are 3 things that you may need to invest in when building a website: design, hosting and domain. What are these?
- Design: unless you know how to design a website (try WordPress, it’s quite simple. I’ll try to post a quick tutorial some day), you will need to pay someone to build your website. And website designers don’t come cheap.
- Hosting: in order for your website to be online, it must be hosted in a physical place somewhere. Since you won’t be running a server at your home, you need to buy hosting. Hosting is accessible; you can get it for around 40€/year. The difference in pricing depends on your website’s speed, size and users. In the beginning, your website will be light, small and won’t get many visitors, so there’s no need to pay for the most expensive hosting. You’ll be able to update it later.
- Domain: this is the name of your website. Your www.thetranslationguy.net or www.eurologos.pt. These are cheap – you can get them for around 10€/year.
So, considering that you can create a website on WordPress (it’s easy, trust me), you’ll have your page online for as little as around 50€/year. It basically only needs to bring you one translation job a year and it’ll pay for itself.
What should you write on your website?
Suppose you want to spend those 50 or 60€ and go ahead with creating your website so that you can add a QR code to your CV or put a link in your application emails; what are potential employers expecting to find there?
There are some essentials:
- About you: introduce yourself, including your education and why you do what you do.
- Your services: what you do (translation, proofreading, interpreting, content creation, etc., and the languages you work with. (note: I wouldn’t include prices, if I were you. Take each project as it comes.)
- Contacts: It can be a simple email or even a form where clients can upload their documents. The latter makes it look really professional.
And then the non-essentials:
- Portfolio (almost essential): you could have a bilingual table where you show a few excerpts of translations you have done. Just make sure they’re really good translations and that your client gives you permission to publish them.
- Multilingual website: if you’re a translator, it makes sense for you to have a bilingual website, right?
- Chat: it’s nice for your clients to have a place to talk to you. However, this can be dangerous. If you’re a one-man operation, you may get spam that could distract you from your work.
- Your clients: you could also show your customers what other clients you work with (e.g. other translation agencies and companies). Just make sure to ask your client for permission before using their logo.
What about the design?
There’s not much to tell you about this. Your personal website is, well… personal. And so is its design. I can give you a few tips, like: make sure it’s simple, not overcrowded with text and easy to navigate. Also, don’t make it too heavy with images! Remember, you bought cheap hosting and if you add too many images it will slow down your speed. If you use WordPress, it has some templates. For those who don’t know how to code, I suggest you start with those.
Another thing you can do is “steal” ideas from other translators’ or translation agencies’ websites. Take a look at their layout and their design and come up with your own version of it.
What else can you do?
The first thing is to share your website with the world! Add a link to all your social media accounts, to your CV, application emails, business cards, motivation letters, your front door, on a zeppelin, whatever you like.
The reach of your website in the short term will depend on how much you’re willing to invest in it. I would recommend Google Ads, but these come at a cost. If you want, you could experiment and see if it pays off. I advise you to be careful though. It can be tricky.
If you’re using WordPress, there are some plugins you can pay for to help you build things on your site like forms or bilingual versions, or even to improve your ranking on Google search (SEO).
Social media is also a good way of promoting your website. Once again, there are ads there. These ads are easier to configure than Google Ads, but they may not be as effective, because your target market may not be there.
And lastly, business cards. What has this got to do with websites? Absolutely nothing. But I’m thinking about my next post, and I wanted to tell you: they’re not dead.