Greater than 2 minutes, my friend!
Proz.com: How Many Kudoz Points Do You Need?
How many kudoz points do you need? You don’t need that many. You just need to appear on page 1 of Proz.com search results. How?
Choose your fields of expertise
First of all, you should decide what specialty fields to display on your public profile. If you’re not yet sure which fields to select, choose any field that interests you, or maybe any field that correspond with your hobbies or passions. When I started out I chose as many as possible, but after a while it is important to pick only 2, 3 or even 4 specific fields (in other words, specialize).
SEE ALSO: How Do You Choose a Translation Specialization?
Set e-mail alerts
Go on your profile, click on Kudoz Settings and opt for Immediate alerts. I chose to receive alerts for kudoz questions that fall into “My interest fields”, which include specialty an interest fields as well.
Even if the alert is immediate, you don’t need to stop what you are doing as soon as you receive it and respond to the kudoz question as quickly as possible. Take your time to finish what you were doing, to do your search and to submit an answer ‒ Take. Your. Time.
SEE ALSO: Answering Kudoz Questions 101
Earn (enough) kudoz points
No, you don’t have to beat the 1st colleague on the list ‒ for the English to Italian language combination I should earn other 12,150 kudoz points to rank first! It would be time consuming and nearly impossible!
When a client browses the translation directory they pick a field of expertise. It comes natural for them because they prefer a smaller pool of translators to choose from. What you want to make sure is to appear on page 1 of the search results related to your fields of expertise (because who looks at page 2 page, eh?). In fact, as soon as I modify the search criteria and select one of my fields of expertise, the Sport/Fitness/Recreation one, I do appear on page 1. Mind you that as of today I (only) have 42 points! Actually, you would only need more than 12 kudoz points to appear on page 1! Now being visible to clients sounds like a more attainable goal, doesn’t it? As you can see you don’t need thousands of kudoz points.
Play smart
Let’s pretend that you’re a client looking for a sports translator and take a look at these search results. Have you noticed anything? There are 25 profiles on page 1. Only 2 include the keyword “sports” in their tagline. Which profile would you click on first? Of course I would visit those 2 profiles first! Anyone would. So remember to pick the right keywords for your tagline.
To sum things up and give you some figures (among Proz.com members):
- English to Italian profiles: 26,835
- English to Italian profiles in Sport/Fitness/Recreation: 2,436
- English to Italian profiles in Sport/Fitness/Recreation with sports-related keyword in their tagline appearing on page 1: 2
Check your ranking
If you go on your Proz.com profile, by clicking on Jobs & Directories/My directory ranking you know exactly how many kudoz points you need to earn to appear on page 1. Invest time and effort to answer only the right kudoz questions.
This will save you time and stress.
Nixie Adams 
Gert Van Assche 
Yuliya Kinash 
Hi Enrico, thank you for this useful and quick guide! I learned a couple of things in less than 2 min. Great!!!! 🙂
Thank you Silvia!
Thanks for the great “My directory ranking” tip!
Michael
Good to know, Michael. I check it every once in a while but I prefer to browse the translation directory because I can see exactly what the potential client sees.
Hi Enrico,
Thanks for this informative and to the point post. I had never realised that we could check our ranking in the directory and get an idea of the number of Kudoz points necessary to appear on the first page.
I am glad you liked it and you found it useful! Thank you Kinzi.
Great overview, Enrico! I hope our readers will find it useful. I personally stopped using kudoz a while ago. If I had to put my “developer hat” on I’d say that the system is nothing but brilliant, both from the point of keeping the users engaged and promoting proz.com online by letting users generate hundreds of thousands of pages for them. This is where I could really learn from the fine folks at Proz. 🙂
But if I had to put my UX “expert” hat on, I’d say the system is flawed because there are two entirely different goals for users to use Kudoz:
a) Help fellow translators in tough situations;
b) Earn point so that you could rank higher;
This often leads to abuse of this system:
– People answering questions in a rush, so they could snatch that first place and earn points;
– Wrong answers without a significant research to back things up;
– Askers choosing wrong answers;
– Askers awarding points when there’s only 1 answer (even it’s a wrong one);
– The competitive nature of Kudoz can lead to excessive arguing, followed by insults;
– People giving answers without actually having an “expert” understanding of the area, simply to get more points;
All of that combined made me stop using Kudoz. I wish the system was focused only on helping each other and had nothing to do with ranking in the directories, but if I put my “developer hat” back on, I’d say that there’s no guarantee people would use it as much as they use it today. After all, when people help others, they like to be rewarded, and high directory ranking is probably a better reward than people being thankful for your help.
I totally agree with you, Dmitry. I really do. I am frustrated every time I see one of the situations you mentioned. Sometimes I just ignore the question altogether when I see silly or rushed answers, but kudos points give you visibility and as you said, I like to be rewarded if I spend time researching the answer. Often I post only references because I want to help or make the asker realize that people are going to the wrong direction with their answers, and because I want to avoid the arguing! Some people have no common sense – these people can be found anywhere, online and not. Thank you for sharing your point of view. E