 Hello. So today I want to talk about a question that's been asked a couple times of me and that is, when you're a freelance translator and you're applying for a job, how long will it take for me to get my first job? You know, how many times will I have to apply and how long will I have to wait before I can get my job before I can then start getting jobs and earning a living from this? I mean, obviously there's no clear, I don't have the answer to that. There's no clear cut answer to it. But what I always say as a recommendation to start applying for or basically as many jobs as you can, I usually recommend to sign up on these websites upwork.com, pros.com, translators cafe, whatever else you might choose, you know, that's language or field specific, you know, for you. And then I recommend sending 20 proposals per day via these websites plus 10 cold emails a day. That might seem like quite a bit, but well, first of all, you can build up to it. Don't start off that way because that's a lot to start off with and you'll just, you won't be able to keep up and you'll burn out and everything. So start off with whatever you feel comfortable with. Say just two proposals a day plus one cold email and then gradually build up to that. If you start low and you build it up, you'll find your limit and what you are comfortable with and the maximum amount and then, you know, so you can find the cutoff there because if you start too high, then you'll just give up. And that's it. The important thing here is that you keep doing this day after day, whatever the number is that you repeat it the same number day after day. You don't want to give yourself any leeway because after a while you keep leewaying it down and down 20 proposals per day, 10 cold emails per day and send those out. Obviously you never know. Nothing's guaranteed, but you know, you do that by and large within three months, you know, you should be earning decent money. I think because also you'll start seeing what gets a response, what doesn't, why, and so you can start tweaking and try and making things work better. Obviously, if you send fewer emails out, it'll take a bit longer. The more emails you send out, the better. The main thing that worries me is I hear from a lot of people and they say that they've been applying to, you know, they sent out, I don't know, three or four emails a week or three or four proposals per week or something like that. And I'm like, well, that's going to take forever. You're not going to find a job anytime soon. If you just do that, it is a numbers game, unfortunately, you really have to work the numbers and just keep sending them out. You can send the perfect email out with a perfect pitch and they still won't look at you because you're playing with the numbers. They're receiving 40 different people applying for their job or more. I mean, you can get really high depending on your language combination. You know, they just don't have time to look over it. Half the time they're just after an hour, they'll see who applied and just choose someone out of there. They'll go through the first people they notice and then just pick them. It is a numbers game. You have to work those numbers. You have to be sending out many proposals. I just came up with that number based on what I've seen by and large. It can be different and I'm sure it will be different depending on how many websites you use, what your language combination is, because your language combination kind of will decide what your competition is, but also what the supply and the demand are. You take something like Spanish to English. There's a lot, there are a lot of other Spanish to English translators. So you might feel, oh, this is going to be hard because there's too many other, there's too much competition. On the other hand, there's also a lot of demand. There are a lot of people who need Spanish to English translators. So those things will tend to equal out, but it's very different from someone who, say, does Ukrainian to Swedish translation, you know, because they're living in a very different world where there's not much competition, but there's also not much demand for it. So they need to adjust accordingly. Have that as a goal. Start low, but have as a goal 20 proposals per day, 10 cold emails per day, something like that should work out, or at least you'll find the level that works for you and then keep at it. And again, it's a numbers game, but doing that you should be able to get a response. Obviously, these proposals can't be full of typos and everything, which is why you have these templates and you work with them and send those out. And don't feel dissuaded just because you sent out two or three different proposals and they didn't work out. You're going to have to send more no matter what. I'm sorry about that. I know you'd like to sit there and just say, Hey, I'm a translator. I'm available. Everyone come to me, but that's not the way it works. You have to go out there. You have to put your face out there. Ideally, you should put yourself everywhere. Every single, if you are a French to English translator, you should be applying to every single French to English translation opportunity out there. Obviously, if it's something that you can't handle, like if it's chemical and very technical and you need to be an expert in this or that, then no, but everything that you can work on, you should be applying for. So you should go to every website where people are offering jobs in your language combination. And your goal should be to apply to every single job available there. If you have a common language, maybe you do want to shoot for more than 20 proposals and 10 code emails or whatever it might be, or maybe a bit lower in the code emails, but more proposals or whatever it might, you know, find the combination that works for you. But you want to be applying to every single job in your language combination out there that you can handle. Keep applying, keep applying, keep applying. It can get very messy out there, you know, and that's why even if you have the perfect template, you're not guaranteed a job, but it is a numbers game and keep going at it. And sooner or later, things will work out. So that's it. I hope I didn't discourage you too much, but it really does pay off after a while. And once you get into the swing of things, it's not even that hard to keep sending these proposals and these code emails out. So I do hope you find this useful. If you do, please don't forget to click like thumbs up because that always helps. And please let me know in the comments if you have other suggestions, don't forget to subscribe and you'll get more videos like this where I talk about freelance translation and freelancing in general. And I'll see you in the next video. Thanks. Bye.