The Plight of a Brown Freelancer (with decent writing & a higher rate)

[Martina P]

I believe I lose out on a lot of jobs for German translation because I live in Austria. Many clients put in location Germany as preference. Now I could apply and tell them that I am an native German speaker, or not apply, but I will not write a first sentence in capital letters on my profile saying GERMAN IS SPOKEN IN AUSTRIA AND NO, IT'S NOT AUSTRALIA! because that is not making the connection to a potential client that I'm seeking.  

[Ayushi V]

Yeah Martina! I understand. And also about the comment on my bio. That is just something I would never like to do. But it was more of a frustrated moment where I wrote that. You know when your past 5 clients have discussed projects with you, and you have spent time sending them elaborate messages outlining the work and then after a series of 10 messages, they try and negotiate for you to write a 1k word article (mind you, with research) in like 8-10$. Plus it is more of a experiment. I am just trying to dissuade clients from getting into conversations if they have a very low budget.

[Martina P]

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Ayushi V wrote:

Yeah Martina! I understand. And also about the comment on my bio. That is just something I would never like to do. But it was more of a frustrated moment where I wrote that. You know when your past 5 clients have discussed projects with you, and you have spent time sending them elaborate messages outlining the work and then after a series of 10 messages, they try and negotiate for you to write a 1k word article (mind you, with research) in like 8-10$. Plus it is more of a experiment. I am just trying to dissuade clients from getting into conversations if they have a very low budget.

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I understand the frustration, and it probably does dissuade many cheap clients, but is also offputting to better clients, and ultimately unprofessional. Your profile looks much nicer now!

[Wendy C]

Ayushi, much improved profile! Good for you for following Mark's advice.

[Petra R]

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Martina P wrote:

I believe I lose out on a lot of jobs for German translation because I live in Austria. Many clients put in location Germany as preference.

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Try living in Italy....

[Jennifer R]

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Petra R wrote:

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Martina P wrote:

I believe I lose out on a lot of jobs for German translation because I live in Austria. Many clients put in location Germany as preference.

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Try living in Italy....

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Or Norway...
But I thing we are probably lose out on the jobs because of Google, DeepL, Bing... and scammers that sell machine translations for rates that are too low for human translations to compete with.

[Jennifer M]

OP, someone keeps spelling your name wrong on your profile feedback.

[Mark F]

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Jennifer M wrote:

OP, someone keeps spelling your name wrong on your profile feedback.

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Oh f me...

[Jamie F]

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Jennifer M wrote:

OP, someone keeps spelling your name wrong on your profile feedback.

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Doh!

And here's somebody else under the 'other' name with much of the same pitch from her profile. 
https://www.freelancer.com/u/i**bleep**alohani 

[Ayushi V]

**bleep**. This is years old!

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Jamie F wrote:

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Jennifer M wrote:

OP, someone keeps spelling your name wrong on your profile feedback.

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Doh!

And here's somebody else under the 'other' name with much of the same pitch from her profile. 
https://www.freelancer.com/u/i**bleep**alohani 

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**bleep**! I did not know that existed. Me and IL went to college together and found freelancing together and I guess at that time we made the account on Upwork and on freelancer and were hardly aware of the norms and rules so we would work together and everything. This is I think some 7-8 years ago. Since then, she has quit freelancing mostly and gone on to work full time with an organization. But do you think this can be a problem? Should I somehow delete this other profile on freelancer? I don't even remember the login details.