 Hello everyone. So today I just wanted to make a quick video, a short video, because there's something that that a couple people are doing that they really should not be doing. And that is to pay for phone calls to the US and to Canada. And I realized there are actually quite a few people out there who are paying to make sales calls or to call clients or prospective clients or whoever it might be in the US and and in Canada. And there's no reason you should be doing that in this day and age. So I just briefly wanted to go over this with you and explain how to make free calls to the US and Canada and why you should all be doing it. First of all, sorry, it's very easy. And it's all through Google. Basically, there's if you go to voice.google.com, then you'll get it. But it also works as an app on any one of your on Android or iPhone or whatever you have. If you basically go to if you search for Google Voice, it'll pop up. And what this does is you download it or you access it online or whatever it is. And it gives you a US phone number, you get to pick your US phone number. In fact, at least when I picked it, I get to I got to choose I think the last four digits and the area code or something like that. Anyway, you get to customize it a bit. And then you have your own US phone number. And if you for those who lived in the US or Canada, you know, that calls within the US and Canada, basically everything that has won as an as a country code, which is the US and Canada, all phone calls are free because they all count as local calls. So once you have this US phone number, that means that a, you can make free phone calls to anywhere in the US and Canada, you can do it from your computer. And you know, I would do this off and do it from my computer with my headphones like this and just speak to them, or you can do it from your phone, which I would also do. You can use a Google Voice app and use your phone like a phone where you make phone calls, you know, like, like it's the 1990s. This allows you to make free phone calls anywhere in the US and Canada, but also it gives you a US phone number, which then if, I mean, you know, this is depending what your type of business is and what you want to do and everything. But if one of your languages that you translate into or from is English, it might not be bad to have a US phone number. You could have potential clients in the US. And if you can give them a US phone number, I mean, how much happier they're going to be. What you can do what I did with mine is I set it up so that if I didn't pick it up, it will go to a voicemail. And so usually that's, that's what would happen with my, with my Google Voice number is it will go to a voicemail and my voicemail, you know, basically said, it's me. I'm not here right now. Please leave a message after the beep. And Google is great because then when they send a voicemail, you get an email, you get a transcript of it, and you get a link where you can play it directly from your Gmail. So when someone calls you receive an email from Google Voice saying that you received a new voicemail and you click on it, and then you can see the transcript here. They're usually pretty good at trying to understand what the person, the message that the person is leaving. As you can see, this is perfect. But otherwise I can also play the message and I click on play message. It opens up Google voicemail. And then I can just play it here. And that's it. So once again, there's no reason you should be paying for phone calls to the US. Plus, you get a free US phone number. So why not have a free US phone number and it won't hurt. And it definitely could help you get new clients or deal with potential clients or colleagues or whatever you might have in the US. So I just wanted to put that out there in case for those people who don't know, now you know. And so it's something that you should keep in mind and possibly take advantage of. And that's pretty much it. I mean, there's no, if I'm missing something and there's a reason why people can't do this, then let me know. But there's no, there's no payment after a while. You don't have to like do anything weird or whatever. And you can just use Google voice. So it just kind of surprised me that more people aren't doing this and that people are still paying to call the US. Now to call other countries, what I usually do, what I have been doing is using Skype. Skype, you do have to pay something of the way it works is that you prepay, put money on your account and then it gets used up when you call internationally. But it's pennies on the dollar for as compared to just using your phone. Even if you get some prepaid calling card, usually I haven't found anything that's consistently as cheap as Skype. And so I just recommend using Skype. I know they do have other apps. So I know there are these apps out there and what they'll do is they'll provide, you know, cheap phone calls and they'll say, oh, the first 30 minutes are free or the first, you know, X number of dollars worth is free for your phone calls. And so I know there are people that'll sign up for that, use the free amount and then sign out and sign back in using a different ID or email address or stuff like that and keep doing that so they can keep getting free phone calls. I've never done that. To me, it seems, I mean, it seems pretty dishonest, quite frankly. But also, I mean, it just seems like a complete waste of time and it just confuses your life. And I don't, I don't spend that much on international calls. So maybe that's why I've never really found the need. I have few, I can't recommend any place to do it because I don't know the names. I'm sure if you search for it, you can find out apps or whatever that you can use this. But I'm pretty sure they don't want you to be using it this way. So, you know, use it at your own peril. But for me, I use Google Voice for any phone calls in the US because it's free. And I use Skype to call internationally everywhere else. And it's been working fine for me. And so that's what I've been doing. So I hope this, you find this video useful in terms of making international calls and also for receiving international calls. So if you found this useful, please let me know by clicking like and don't forget to subscribe. And you'll get more videos that hopefully you can find useful as a freelancer, as a freelance translator. And otherwise, I'll talk to you next time. Thanks. Bye.