Speaker 1: This video is a review of the biggest website for a language professional, prose.com. Coming up. Hello and welcome back to the Freelanceverse. Today's video is going to be kind of a review of probably the most important website as a freelance translator called prose.com, or pro-z or pro-z. You will hear many different pronunciations. I think it's prose, I think I've heard it in kind of like an official event. So one of the community members actually wrote me about this topic. He's called Alessio. Thank you very much for the message again. He said if I could ever make a video about the paid versus the free version of prose, because he needed some information whether to make the decision to pay for it or not. I thought yeah that's a great idea, but actually I'm gonna make a whole video about prose, because this also won my list of video ideas and yeah. So if you guys also have video ideas like Alessio, just let me know. He wrote me on LinkedIn, it's a great way. You can also write them in the comments and I'm gonna try to execute them as soon as possible. I think this video will go up about three weeks after you wrote me, so I hope I can answer your questions. So prose. If you are on the path to becoming a freelance translator, it's inevitable that you will come across this website, because it's for sure the biggest community of translators. What it basically is, it's a job board, it's a community page, it's an events hub etc all together. So I call it a community hub. So what I'm gonna do in this video, I'm gonna tell you a bit about it, what it is, how it's useful, what it was before, how it is now useful for translators. Then I'm gonna get into the plans, the member plans that they have, whether you should get it in my opinion. I'm also gonna tell you a bit about my personal experience and while I'm talking I'm trying to insert clips, basically screen recordings from my prose to just show you where I am, like what it looks like, the page etc. So the website was started in 1999 and by now it has, in fact I'm gonna show you a couple of numbers here that I found on the website. I think it has now 29 employees all across the world and it has more than a million registered users. So as you can see it's definitely a great community to be a part of, because I think if you sign up there you are part of a million that really take this job seriously. They see this as a profession which already puts you miles ahead of your competition. So on prose you will find it's essentially a job porch, that's the main function. You can go there and you can find jobs, you can find clients that are looking for translators on the website and you come from the other side, so it's kind of like a meeting ground for outsources and for language service providers where you can meet. And I get this question sometimes that how do you get paid through prose, like how do they pay you etc. And that's not how it works, right, that's a misunderstanding. Essentially you can see it as like LinkedIn, you know, you just connect with someone and then you usually go offline and you communicate either via phone or via email usually. No one pays you through prose, it's not a, it won't be your customer if that's what you mean. Apart from the job board it's an excellent opportunity to, on there, to learn. There's a lot of training material on there. We personally have never used the training material but I heard it's very good, so if you have time as a newbie, probably not booked out yet, so you can just spend time on there and learning, learning, learning about the profession. There are a lot of questions and answers, so usually newbies would ask questions or also established ones, it doesn't matter, and then senior more established translators would answer them. There are events on there, usually virtual events like webinars, for example about certain CAD tools, translation memories. If something changes in the industry they would usually have a virtual event where you could just sign up. If you're a member you can sign up for free there. There are many tools on there, I'm going to touch on them more in the paid members plan because most of the tools are only available to paid members. But you can imagine that you have a profile on there with your picture and all your information, your language pair, your speciality, so it's also kind of like a profile. It's very well known, so if an outsourcer has no idea about the translation industry and they search for how do I find a translator, prose.com is probably coming up in Google because they have a very high search ranking. So they will eventually end up probably on prose.com and just look for like the language pair or whatever just to translate that they need to, and then there comes a list. And if you are on this list you have a very good chance that you get the job, right? One very cool thing in the job directory is that when you sign up your profile you obviously write which languages you're working with and what specialities, right? And when you then go on the job directory it will automatically be curated for you. So you will see the jobs that fit your profile, fit your languages, your specializations, etc. Because what you can do with it, with this job, you can quote. What quote is you can just get in touch with the outsourcers. You get the email usually or you can write them directly through prose and you can say hey I'm available, I charge this much and please contact me via email. I usually tend to go directly off prose as soon as possible so it becomes more of a normal business interaction, you know, when you're on email. So this all sounds great in my opinion and I really think you should be on there when you start because it's really a one-stop shop for newbies where you can just get your first experience in, right? It's great. But I have to say in the last year something changed. I'm not sure when exactly, maybe two years ago, because I remember when I started in 2016 I didn't pay for a membership I just used the free version and it still had a very good functionality. I think I found some jobs through it, you know, I made connections, I learned a lot with the questions etc. But now I hear more and more also from Alessio that it's just not useful anymore the free version and I can imagine that they just really made it a paid service which is fine, you know, because you get a lot of value through it so it's okay to charge for this service, right? But I also understand that $120 is what the normal paid version is per year is a lot as a freelancer of course. That's a big investment if you're not sure whether it will work, right, whether it will pay off. But the paying off part also depends a lot on you, how you deal with it, right? If you just pay for it and then you don't go on it and you don't make use of it, of course it's not worth it. But I really think that if you have kind of a budget when you're starting out, maybe you have $100, $200 that you think you're going to invest into this career because you want to make it work, I honestly think it's probably a good way to start and buy the PROSE membership because rather than, for example, spending it on a website or on LinkedIn premium or something, maybe LinkedIn premium is also a good idea, but investing these $120 at least for a year, then you can cancel it if you don't like it. I think it's a great start because think about it, you are then already so much ahead of, I don't know the exact number, but probably more than 80% of your competitors, right? Because on PROSE there are a million people that really take it seriously and if you are a paid member, you rank higher in the directory. There is a part of the directory for the free version people, then one for the paid version and one for the plus, which is more expensive. So you already come up before way the majority of people in the search directory, so people will find you more easily. So if you are, of course, if you are able to pay for it, if you can afford it, I think it's a great investment. Especially, I just remember, since it's 100% tax write-off, right? At least here in Belgium and I think in most places, that's quite hard to find for a freelancer when you're working from home to find 100% write-off. So in that regard, if you can really deduct it from the taxes 100%, it's definitely an investment I would consider, at least now. When I started, the free version was still okay to use, but now I would go for it. So now let's get into a bit more about the member plans, the paid versions. So you have the free basic version, and then you have the first paid plan, which is 120 a year, and you have the plus, I think it's called 480 a year. I'm going to show you a screen recording of kind of the overview of the perks and disadvantages of each. I would definitely suggest to go for the 120. I don't really see the benefit in the 180 one. I think you have better security, they call it, and you get a free license for a CAD tool with it, and you're part of a mastermind translator community. If any of these is interesting for you, then sure, why not try it? I've never tried it. I think the 120 is perfectly fine for my needs. One of the main reasons why it's important to pay for the membership, in my opinion, is that there are a lot of jobs, probably even most jobs now, that are either members only or members first. What that means is, if you're a free member, you can actually see the job posting, but you are not able to get the contact details, and you're not able to quote, because it says members only. So only members can actually get in touch with the client. And if it says members first, that's even worse, because you probably think that, yeah, if I wait the 12-hour limit, or the 24-hour limit, and then quote, it's still going to be fine. But trust me, in this time frame, one of the members will have snatched the job, and there's no way you can... If you manage to get the job after the deadline, then it's probably a crappy job, and no one wants it, you know what I mean? So then, as I previously said, events and training material is available to members. That's amazing. I think it's actually a great deal, the $120, if you get so much value. You have virtual events, networking, but also learning events. What else? You have discounts, very interesting discounts, that links to the, probably the previous video before that, I'm not sure when this goes out, but the one about CAD tools, where I said go on pros.com and actually look for group buying discounts, right? You can buy MemoQ or STL with other people, maybe 50 other people, and get it way cheaper. Another benefit that I like from the paid version is the invoicing tool. I actually use this a lot. This is also one of the reasons why I pay for it, because I use their invoicing tool, so I don't have to use another one. Yeah, they make it really easy. You can just create your clients that you have within pros, and then just create new invoice, and take these clients, and you know, you have a template that your invoice will always be the same. Of course, the first time you have to set it up, what needs to be on your invoice, but afterwards, it's always the same, and then you can track it when it's due, when it's paid. Now, having said all that, I'm probably still not the best example as a pro member for pros, because what you really should do is just answer lots of questions, and get into the community, and contribute, etc, and then you can earn kudos, which is basically a currency on the website, which bumps you up in the search engines, you know, you get batches, etc, and then you rank higher, and I don't do any of that, unfortunately. I never got into it. I don't know, I was just more busy with actually doing work that's paid, of course, but yeah, like, especially in the beginning, if you have time on your hands, you can really get into it. For me, how I actually use it nowadays is, like, usually my weeks are full, I don't really need to look for other clients at the moment, so that's, of course, very lucky for me, but how I use pros, I don't really go on there, on the job directory, and look for it, but you can create an alarm, a notification alarm, with your language pair, your specialities, whatever you want, and then whenever a job comes online that matches your profile, you get an email. You actually get a lot of emails, so I can't have them all in my inbox, that would just be too annoying, so I created a separate pros folder, and a rule that all my emails from them go directly into this folder, and then when I have some downtime, maybe an afternoon, I have no jobs or something, I go into this folder, and I look through it, if there is something new that I can answer, and maybe get a new job in, you know, that's how I then do my acquisition, basically. It's a very cheap acquisition, because you don't actually need to look for the people, because they already stated their interest. Now, of course, there are also negatives to pros, and especially in the last year, it's been accused of price dumping quite a lot, and I have to say it is true. Luckily, the German market is still quite stable, and you find good deals on there, but other languages, yeah, you see very, very low rates on there, but it doesn't have to be, so even if 80-90% in your language pair is crappy rates, right, but if you just do your due diligence, if you look for the good ones, you can still find very good options on pros, and it's more of like, how do I say, it's more of like getting into the industry with pros is the easiest way, you know. After, of course, you can find your clients elsewhere, it doesn't matter, but I feel like $120 for a year, maybe the first two years, you can pay them $240 to get your foot into the industry, I think that's a good deal, that's not too much, because then, if you find, let's say, over two years, if you find five jobs through it, you're in the plus, probably, right, but of course, it's up to you, it's just my advice. If I could go back in time now to 2016, when I started, I would invest that money. Another small benefit is a thing called Feature Translator, it's not a big deal, but once in a while, maybe every month or so, pros writes me and says, hey, you will be the Feature Translator on that day, in this hour, for one hour, you are on the main page with your photo and your language pair. I don't think it matters for the clients, but... So, sorry, my camera died just before I wanted to end recording. Anyways, these were all my thoughts about pros, and I realized that probably I sounded a bit too encouraging, convincing you to get the member version, and that's not true at all, right? In fact, I probably don't go on pros more than twice a month or something. With the email notifications, I'm still in tune of what's going on, and it is just the biggest community, you know? Of course, there's a lot of noise on there, because it's the biggest, but there's also a lot of value on there. So, all I'm saying, if I was to start again, years back now, with the knowledge I have now, I would probably go for the investment. I hope I answered your questions, Alessio, let me know in the comments if that video helped you, and also let me know what you decide, if you go for it or not. Of course, there are other platforms, like Translator's Cafe, for example, that are similar and that are free. You can also just go the free route and try this. Yeah, thanks so much for watching, and consider to subscribe, it helps a lot. We can grow the community even more and get more interesting questions in, and I see you next Monday with a new video.