Credit: Yuri Arcurs on Photodune
Recently here on Freelance Switch, Thursday Bram discussed whether freelancers should be making use of the trend towards global outsourcing, to free up their writing and project management time by employing virtual assistants overseas to manage menial tasks.
Today, I?d like to expand upon that theme, and talk about how freelancers, especially copywriters, could be turning their personal cottage industry into an international enterprise, by teaming up with translators to go global.
The web is becoming an increasingly multilingual place. The growth in internet accessibility worldwide means that, in the near future, English will no longer be the ?lingua franca? of the web.
Web surfers prefer to browse the web in their native language ? and this means that if you want to reach an international audience, you need to go multilingual.
1. Boom Times in the International Web
The good news is that there?s a massive untapped opportunity for businesses of any size to take advantage of ? including freelancers. The fact is that there?s less competition for search engine rankings in the foreign language internet than there is in the English internet, purely because there?s less content overall.
Internet marketers who work across language divides all agree that it?s much easier to get to the top of the search rankings for a key phrase in French, Spanish or Swahili than it is in English ? and the cost to develop a translated and optimized microsite for a foreign language is relatively small, compared to the potential return on investment.
2. Developing the All-in-One Multilingual Package
Let?s say you?re a freelance writer, who produces articles in English for publications around the web. Chances are, once you?ve written a story, you?ll only be able to sell it once ? nobody wants to pay for duplicate content.
Rather than simply offering your clients a copy in one language, you could be offering them the complete package to export internationally.
But, if you were to team up with professional translators for a range of different languages, you could sell your translated article five, ten or fifteen times over, to websites or companies in other language markets.
For writers who specialize in producing content for online marketing purposes, the bonus here is that Google?s duplicate content rule does not apply across different languages ? one article which is translated and localized (which means paying careful attention in the translation to ensure that the references, currencies, symbols, etc, are appropriate for the target market) can be sold to websites in German, Russian, Swedish, etc, and will count as new and original content in each language.
Businesses small and large are starting to realize the benefits of exporting internationally using the web (such as in this BBC article), and a massive part of any international digital marketing strategy is content. Companies need snappy website copy translated into multiple languages for their localized websites and social media profiles, and they need informative and useful articles for content marketing purposes.
Rather than simply offering your clients a copy in one language, you could be offering them the complete package to export internationally. Plus, using your translator connections as go-betweens, you could start sourcing clients in foreign language markets ? tools like Google?s Global Market Finder are brilliant for working out which countries represent big opportunities for keywords like ?copywriter?.
To connect with translators, try websites like ProZ and Translator?s Cafe, which are online hang-outs for professional linguists and the ideal place to start putting together your multilingual copy dream team.
3. Increase Your Customer Base – Reduce Your Risks
Those copywriters who act now to stake their claim across a range of language markets will reap the benefits.
There are some obvious benefits to expanding your customer base beyond one language market. Naturally, there?s the possibility of dramatically increasing your client base, which means more work.
There?s also the benefit of hedging your currency risk ? if you?re being paid in US dollars, Euros, Pound Sterling and RMB, then if one of those currencies takes a dive, you can focus your efforts on selling in other markets. If you only earn in one currency, you?re at the mercy of that currency?s fluctuations.
The fact is that the future of the web is multilingual. Those copywriters who act now to stake their claim across a range of language markets will reap the benefits. Whether you go the whole hog and form a multilingual copy partnership, or simply hook up with a translator to sling some of your articles in foreign languages, there?s money to be made for writers in the foreign language web.
Photo credit: Some rights reserved by Yuri Arcurs.
Web Design Atlanta Web Design Charlotte Web Design Raleigh Web Design Internet Marketing
No comments:
Post a Comment