 Hello everyone, this is Robert Gephart. Today I wanted to address a question that was asked to me as a comment on one of my videos and it was asked by Norm Norm and the question is Can I be anonymous as a freelancer? I'm gonna assume that this means can you be anonymous? Can you go by without using your real name? Can you get by and get clients and have a successful career not having to put your real name out there online? Now, I feel if when you're working online transparency and honesty are very important because You're dealing with someone who you've never met probably will never meet probably will never be in contact with Okay, if you meet someone face-to-face and you're hiring them for a job Even if it's for a short one-time job, you can meet them face-to-face get a feel for them Kind of feel like you know them you can ask them where they live talk a bit about what you guys know in common Etc etc you get their phone number whatever contact details you want and you're fine If you meet someone online though, you don't have any of that You're meeting someone from the other side of the globe You don't know if they're gonna disappear on you if they're gonna do a good job or a bad job Or maybe just send you a bad job and then disappear or send you a virus or you know, whatever now Obviously vast majority of the people aren't like that But you need to put yourself in the shoes of people who are hiring when they hire someone online They really don't know what they're gonna get so you use websites that you can sort of trust like Upwork Impros and these other websites because they have an escrow service or they have a history of What you've done online they have your ratings and referrals and recommendations and stuff like that and all of these can help When you are working online every little bit of transparency and honesty that you can show there So all the information you can show of yourself will help your cause basically help you in looking more Honest and transparent and trustworthy for the client to hire you having said that I can also understand that maybe you don't want to Put all your information online say hey, this is every single you know little last piece of information about me Have fun because unfortunately you do find people out there online who can do stupid things So how do you go about it? How do you find this happy medium and and what can you do and namely would it be possible not to use your real name? Can you get by just using a nickname or an alias or something along those lines? Well, first of all, they're two things if you don't want to use your real name You have two options one is to use an alias or a nickname So that's something that's not your real name and it's quite obvious that it's that it's a nickname of sorts and The second option would be to use a fake name So you just invent some other name and say that's yours out of these two option I definitely prefer the nickname and the alias because while it's not your real name at least it's obvious So there's a certain transparency in that if I use say Rob G or RG or something like that Then people know they can guess that's not my real name So I'm being upfront about not using my real name. I would not use a fake name The only reason I wouldn't know you could argue say oh, but if I use a different name if I say William Johnson and I just use that name then it should be okay in theory it should be but there are several issues first of all You're gonna upload either past projects. You've worked on or CV or you know schools you've been to stuff like that and if they do decide to Look at your background and or to search for you or do anything along those lines Which they might do for bigger projects long-term projects stuff like that Then they're not gonna find you or they're gonna find that you're lying about your name in which case you're gonna automatically be crossed out because once again transparency and honesty are big online and so They won't want to mess with you However, if you use a nickname then they know it's a nickname And so when they're researching you they can either ask you if you can provide your real name or what else you could provide So that they can feel more at ease and usually there it's enough to provide You know if you provide a phone number, that's great because you're like look I don't like to put all my information online but here's my phone number if you give me a call I'll be happy to talk to you and And that way at least they have personal contact with you and they can talk to you Skype also is great Because that's like a phone call But they get to see you face-to-face and they get more of a feel for you So if you can provide a Skype ID a phone number, you know, but at minimum an email address that Obviously that you read and then you can reply to pretty quickly then those can also help the more of these you can provide the better Obviously along with these you want ratings and referrals But when you're first starting out, which I assume is what he's talking about then you won't have those So you need to provide something else a resume of sorts is also good You can just it's very easy to take your name off and just put a nickname or something along those lines there Remember that your name might be in your email address So you'll probably be using another email address, which means it'll probably be Gmail hotmail You know one of those kind of anonymous ones if that's the case and the email doesn't help all that much if it's an old school email It helps more so If you have something at your school edu Even if it doesn't have your name it helps because it's not one that you set up anonymously There's obviously a real one that you earned so to speak So just keep those in mind when you're dealing with people what I'm gonna do now Actually is go through some of so I'm gonna put on my client hat and be basically be someone who hires freelance Translators and go through a couple profiles just so you can get a feeling of what other people are doing and what it looks like For the client if you use a nickname or other different information And hopefully that'll give you a good idea as to how to proceed. Okay, so this is a pros comm once again this is the main translation website and I want to go through some of the jobs that I've posted here in the past. I think it's posted jobs and Show you some of the people who applied so you can see from my point of view as someone who's posting jobs someone who's Trying to look for a freelancer. You can get a good idea here It's a recent one that I posted and you can get a good idea as to what I see when you post So here are the names of some of the people who posted here. Let's show them all actually we can just start here If you look this person used his real name real name real name real name real name real name Actually, this is something I didn't mention before but a photo is a huge help as well Even if you don't want to use a real name if you can provide a photo it usually helps quite a bit So this person use a real name, but no photo So when I click on here, I don't actually I also don't see any ratings or referrals Which is a pretty bad sign and for me quite frankly I don't think I would hire this person just based off this I see one question and answer it under kudos, but that's because I know my way around pros I know what this means most people won't know that and so they see this and they're not sure what to do one other thing they can do is search for a CV but There is no CV. Of course, there's a portfolio here as you can see actress degree UFF I don't know what that is off about here University of Westminster Westminster So actually here, this is also good because it's it is ties to the real world, right? I could if I wanted to contact the University of Westminster and ask if If a Shirley DeMazo has actually been there or not if it's for a long-term project then and I'm actually gonna go and contact some of the People they've worked with in the past and that's something that I could actually look into Here if we keep going down we see this person up has what is obviously an alias or a nickname and So let's look into it, but she has a photo. So that helps on the other hand. There's no feedback here And so once again also doesn't provide any information here No credentials November. I mean she might not be a member, but nothing in about me to me This is no no, you know, even if it's a small job. I do want someone that I can trust and Quite frankly, this looks like someone who maybe just signed up and thought hey, you know I'll see if I can make some extra cash on this and But hasn't been very serious about trying to build their portfolio about pros comm So I am afraid that if I hire her she will end up Deciding oh, this isn't for me and then let's say the quality might not be so high or she might not give it Her all and then that's it Look, this is what I get from the limited information I get online on these profiles And so just keep this in mind when you're looking I want to look at something else here Chinese to English because not being Someone who's from China a lot of times Chinese names can seem different if you look at some of these names Alec Battles is probably a real name. This is obviously a nickname. This Doris Lang is probably her English name Right or Western name. Let's say here to Yorkton is probably the same deal Lily is also Catherine Schwann and Aaron Chia So all of these seem to be using Western names because they're easier for someone like me to pronounce That doesn't bother me at all. So this would probably go under the thing of nicknames Of course when I do look someone like this up, I will I'll understand if If I search for their work records or their school records that the name might not be Catherine But it might be some other name, you know some Chinese name now. She doesn't offer this here Just says Catherine Schwann And I don't see much more information. So oh, but there is a phone number. So this is great There's a YouTube page, which I'm not gonna click on now, but that could be good or not So but let's go back to this list because I want to I want to also look at the person with the nickname Okay, why is it doing this? Okay, here we go. Okay, because this one is obviously a nickname So when I look through all of these I see this nickname I have to say it doesn't bother me all that much What I'm going to do is when I look at each of their profiles is I'm gonna check here Positive entries this shows that even though she doesn't use her real name She has well first of all she has a picture and this always gives a good feeling to someone who's hiring because Suddenly they get a visual of who they're dealing with but when you see 25 positive entries that's always a good sign and And here you can see what people have entered and not only that but I can go here and see that okay She's been on this site since 2013 and she has 25 positive entries This is obviously something she's taken seriously and she so she'll probably be quite good at this She's filled out all her information here She has all these point now someone who's just new to the pros.com website like a new client Probably won't know all this but she has all this information and as well as a PDF of her resume Which is important too and this is once again for the more longer term projects at least here I know I can call her and and actually here she does provide a real name her Chinese name, so I Would say her using a nickname was not a problem at all in this case Because I felt like I'm dealing with someone real who's not hiding anything and it's just happens to use their online Nickname for this so if that's your issue you don't want to use your real name You know an online nickname will be fine, but try to provide as much other information as you can Let's go quickly here because this person obviously doesn't have a picture of herself just has that this is still better than having nothing at All but 71 positive entries is awesome. And so we know once you're at the point with so many positive entries Yeah, you kind of get a pass for the rest, but when you're first starting out then yeah You need to show as much information as you can so in conclusion I feel that you should provide as much information as you can just to make the client feel more at ease If you don't want to use your real name, that's fine use a nickname They'll know it's a nickname that should be fine But provide as much other information as you can ways to get in touch with you things that show your past experience That they feel they can follow up on even if they don't Chances are no one's gonna call the university that you went to or past people you work for unless it's like a full-time or long-term job But at least they feel they can and that can do a lot for a person I would not lie I would not give a fake name because if you do get found out about those first of all They'll cut you off second of all, you never know if they'll report you to a website or stuff like that So yeah, that's about it. I hope that helps in terms of what you can provide it always will be a balancing act You don't want to provide everything online about yourself But you should provide enough to make the client feel like you won't disappear and that you're an honest person So yeah, I hope that helps you norm norm and obviously norm norm is a nickname as well And I hope that helps you and I hope that helps all of you there or maybe wondering how much information to provide on these websites If you have any other questions like that, feel free to let me know You can let me know in the comments below and I try to read all of them and get to all of them Feel free to subscribe if you want more videos about freelancing and freelance translation Don't forget to leave a thumbs up if you like this video because that always helps and I'll see you on the next video. Thanks. Bye