Building your freelance translation business is tough, right?

I mean, you’ve worked hard to learn the skills you need to turn your translations into an art, and if being a top translator alone were enough to build a booming business, that’d be great…

But as soon as you open up shop, you discover a never ending list of other skills you’ve got to master. From marketing to web design to SEO, there’s a ton of advice on the web for how you should build your business.

At TM-Town, we had a different vision for translators. One in which a lot of the heavy lifting of being discovered by clients is done by none other than… your previous work.

Now that we’ve created a number of tools that help you work better, we spent the last couple of weeks developing all new profiles that will put both you and your work in the best light possible.

So, if you’re tired of updating countless profiles and optimising your personal website, I know you’re going to love the new profiles that we’ve rolled out.

Here’s the short story. When you set up your TM-Town account, the result you get is a beautiful online portfolio site through which you can connect with peers and potential clients. Take a look:

In other words, you focus on your work, using our tools to align and back up your work, and we do the heavy lifting of putting you in front of clients who are looking for a translator with your exact skill set.

And on top of that, we give you a great online home base to operate your business. If our profiles were a premium WordPress theme, you could easily drop $60+ on it…

But we want you to look as great as your translations, so it’s included for free for everyone who signs up.

Take a Look and Set Up Your All New Profile

After you watch the video, I’d like to walk you through each section of the new profiles now and show you how to set it up so that it looks great.

To get started, click on Manage Your Data > Edit Your Profile and scroll down to the Account Settings area.

---

Header

The header area of your profile allows you to showcase not only your skills, but your own personal style.

Let me walk you through where the parts of the header come from.

1. Under the General Information section under Account Settings, choose a professional headshot of you and your pearly whites.
2. Directly under that, choose a background image that is at least 2000px wide by 605px high.
3. Next, fill in your name, preferred name, and native language.
4. If you scroll down a little, you’ll see a field for ‘Tagline.’ You’ll want this to briefly tell clients why they should work with you.
5. To finish up all the info in the header area, choose a theme color based on what you think would go nicely with your photo.

As for your language pairs, these are either added when you first join TM-Town, or set during document uploads. In addition, fields of expertise cannot be directly edited after the sign up process. If you would like to edit these items, kindly email [email protected] and choose up to five fields of expertise from our FAQ's page.

We do it this way because we believe highly that everyone should have a finite list of fields, and areas of expertise shouldn’t really change that much. But if they do, please send us an email and we’ll get you sorted!

---

About Me

The About Me section is directly under the header. This gives a peer or potential client a snapshot of the work you’ve done through pie charts, as well as shows them how you work (what CAT tools you use, accepted payments, your location, etc.).

1. First, from the General Information section, make sure your country of residence is selected.
2. Then continue filling out the rest of the General Information section. You’ll need to give a descriptive summary of your work and why you excel in the About Me field, and choose your years of experience.
3. To add CAT tools, use the dropdown tool under Software You Use. Click on the ‘Add Software Tool’ link to add multiple tools.
4. To finish up the sidebar in the About Me section, from your User Account Settings scroll down to Social Media and Other Profiles. Connect your ProZ.com account and fill in the URLs to any of the other profiles you may have.
5. To add payment methods, go to the Payment Methods section and fill out all of the information there.
6. Now, to show potential clients what you specialise in through your work, you’ll want to make sure your Translation Units and Term Concepts numbers are not zero. Uploading work or completing sample translations is how you can add this information to your profile, which will also unlock pretty pie charts so visitors can quickly see what you specialise in.

Once you’ve done that, your profile should now be looking pretty nice!

---

My Work

The My Work section is a place for you to show off up to six of your past projects. There are two types of projects shown.

One comes from any sample translations from your ProZ.com profile that you have transferred to TM-Town, or sample translations you have completed from TM-Town's sample translation library. What’s great about these type of projects is that we can show visitors your actual translations. They’ll be able to click to see the source and target translation units.

The second type of project you can show are files that you’ve directly uploaded to TM-Town and given a public title to. To allow these types of projects to show up, remember to set a public title when you upload any documents with us. The content of these documents stays private, only the field(s) of expertise and public title are shown.

---

My Experience

In the My Experience section, you can show visitors a little bit more about you. There’s a max of three boxes that will appear there. One for each of: years of experience, education, and memberships.

You’ll need to add at least two of the below to unlock this section on your profile. To fill them in is super simple. Just head to your profile settings again and look for:

1. Years of Experience as a Professional Translator
2. Education
3. Associations and Memberships

---

Map and Availability Calendar

This section is self explanatory, and there’s not much you need to do here.

To make sure the map is showing your current location, select your country from the drop down in your General Information settings.

The availability calendar is really simple to use. Simply click on the days you’re unavailable, and they’ll turn to red. If you need to make an unavailable day available, again, simply click on it and you’re done. Easy!

---

Terminology Marketplace

If you've got glossaries for sale in our Terminology Marketplace, up to three of your best sellers will show up here, along with information such as your total number of glossaries for sale, your number of sales, and your average rating. Below that will be a place where the latest three reviews from your customers are shown.

If you haven’t yet set up shop in our marketplace, get started now. It’s a great way to get a little extra spending cash and show you’re really an expert. If you’re selling high quality glossaries that other translators want, potential clients will see that and know you’re one of the leaders in your field.

---

Recent Activity

This section has some updates coming in the near future, but for now it shows details for five of your latest uploads.

Not only is this fun, but again, it’s a way to show visitors the kind of fields you’ve been working in recently.

If I need brain surgery, I’d like to know that the surgeon has recently done some brain operations. I don’t need a brain surgeon who’s been taking a break selling real estate for the last 10 years.

---

Similar Translators

This area does what it says and shows other translators who are similar to you.

---

Well, that does it!

We’ve now walked through each of the sections of your new shiny profiles, and I’ve shown you how you can optimize each section so that you are putting yourself in the best light.

Usually online profiles for translators are dull and drab, so no one really wants that to be their only online presence...

This means setting up your own portfolio site that takes money or another set of skills you simply don’t have time to learn.

We set out to do something different by giving you a free online profile that also has the personality and style of a portfolio site. Plus, it’s linked into a network where clients and peers alike will have no trouble finding you as long as you constantly work on your expertise.

If you haven’t signed up for your new TM-Town profile, it’s easy to get started here!

And for all of you who have been with us for the last several months, it will only take a few minutes to get your new profile to look amazing.

As always, I welcome any comments you have. If you’re excited about the new profiles, I also ask that you take just a second of your time to share the word with your friends and colleagues!

(PS - If you notice anything strange about your particular profile, please give me a shout at [email protected]. As we just launched, there might still be a few issues here and there.)