Greater than 3 minutes, my friend!
Why Should You Help Your Fellow Freelancers? 10 Reasons why you should help your fellow freelance colleagues.
Kindness does NOT equal weakness. Quite the contrary. It takes tremendous strength to be kind to someone.” -Bruce Kasanoff
When you analyze the different ways freelancers and entrepreneurs can help each other, you soon realize that ultimately the help goes full circle.
Kindness fosters more kindness. It opens eyes instead of closing them. It is contagious and it feels wonderful.” -Bruce Kasanoff
See for yourself. If you help your fellow freelancer, it will help to…
1. Promote Good Business Practices
Supporting good business practices ensures freelancers not only compete on fees but quality, value and professionalism.
Defending good business practices is good for your own welfare as well as everyone else.
2. Keep Fees Fair
New freelancers need to research the average fees for the type of work they do because they tend to price incorrectly.
3. Inform, Inspire and Protect
When you connect with other fellow freelancers, you share ideas, experiences, mistakes, accomplishments, resources and solutions.
The more of us who are informed, inspired and knowledgeable about our profession, the more of us are able to represent and protect the interests of the profession as a whole.
4. Provide and Receive Work
Let’s say you have too much work, if you have a network of freelance colleagues, refer a client to a fellow professional.
This way you help the client and your colleague, in the future they may want to return the favor when they are busy too.
5. Find Answers
Many social networks have groups or forums with hundreds of freelancers posting useful information and answering various questions related to the profession.
Feel free to ask questions and contribute answers.
If you know of a solution, add your two cents, (you never know) you just might help someone.
6. Improve Quality and Value
The profession is ever changing and evolving.
Experienced freelancers can recommend organizations to join or training to attend.
There are many blogs, Facebook pages and Twitter feeds by seasoned professional translators and interpreters that offer great advice and best practices.
Re-tweet, share and encourage each other, freelancers should rely on each other for support.
7. Improve The Profession
By helping one another out we create a stronger profession through knowledge, quality, value, and professionalism which in turn will help justify our fees.
8. Find Something New
What if you are growing tired of what you do?
A fellow freelancer may tell you about a certain niche within your language pair(s), specialization or services which might be of interest to you.
9. Inform The Client
All freelancers should be working together on informing the client from all angles, offline and online.
Remember, studies have shown that people need to see and/or hear something 7 times before it sinks in, thus growing the respect, value, and raising awareness about our profession.
10. Feel Good About Yourself
“Kindness fosters more kindness. It opens eyes instead of closing them. It is contagious and it feels wonderful.” -Bruce Kasanoff.
Maybe a couple of freelancers might be your competition in the future, but you will create a stronger and better profession which in turn benefits you and everyone.
Still worried about the competition?
You have nothing to worry about as long as you are very good and have achieved quality work, services and professionalism.
As you can see, in the end, by helping others you ultimately help yourself.
So this is my short list of 10 reasons why we should help our fellow freelancers.
Can you think of any others we could add to the list?
As always, thank you for reading and sharing my posts.
Feel free to connect or email me, Carmen Arismendy. I’m a professional Spanish interpreter-translator and founder of eLingual.Net. I started the eLingual Network because I could not find a fair, no middleman, no job bidding, ethical and transparent meeting place for translators, interpreters and clients online. The website is in beta phase and by no means perfect but it’s a step in the right direction.
eLingual.Net’s mission is to spread happiness worldwide through happy translators, interpreters and clients.
For the professional translator and interpreter, this means no middleman, no job bidding, the freedom of setting their own fees, having control over their services, and who they choose to work with.
For the clients, this means working directly with ethical and professional translators and interpreters committed to quality and value.
Join our happy community, let’s work together!
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Nixie Adams 
Gert Van Assche 
Yuliya Kinash 
Lovely post, Carmen! I agree with every single thing you wrote. We need to help each other, inspire one another, teach others and lead by example. Hopefully with the help of Open Mic will be able to achieve all those goals and improve this profession. Together.
Thank you Dmitry for your comment as well as creating such an awesome space for us.
You’re welcome! The Open Mic’s been out for less than a week but I already see an amazing level of engagement. And the more we grow the better it will become 🙂
It’s nice to have one single place where you can meet and talk with your colleagues without the need to be jumping between different groups, social networks and forums.
Yes, very true Dmitry.
Cannot but agree with all ten points! Thank you, Carmen!
There are lots of interesting projects on the web. Thus, there is no need for translators to be competitors. We shall help each other on our way to success, share knowledge, teach how to get those projects, how to approach clients and promote services, and, of course, constantly learn new from the community.
Thank Simon for taking the time to write a comment. It’s true, our market is not limited to our local area, it’s international. Working together is the best way to improve our profession, educate clients and better ourselves.
I am personally committed in sharing this approach. Translators who reached a “professional maturity” cannot but agree with you. There are too many unprofessionals around that young translators – and clients – are often confused. We need to set high standards and improve the profession through our invidual approach and collaboration.
Yes Francesca! It’s not about competition it’s about collaboration. Thank you for your lovely comment and I completely agree with you 🙂
Just read this now for the first time. Very great and inspiring post, actually!