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BUILDING A

KILLER TRANSLATOR WEBSITE YOUR STEP-BY-STEP GUIDE TO AWESOMENESS

OK, so you want to be a translator. Or maybe you’ve been working for a while and you’re looking to up your game a little.

You’re going to need a website.

There are no two ways around it. Owning your own web page is your first step towards legitimacy in an online world filled

with amateurs, hucksters and wannabees. The internet is a wild world, and your clients want something reassuring. A

dedicated website and your very own email address help. A lot.

I worked as a freelance translator far too long before I realized the difference a professional-looking website and a dedicated

email address would make. A colleague took me aside one day and let me in on the secret: “Greg,” she said, “gmail.com and

Weebly? Seriously? It’s time to notch it up a little.”

She was right, it was time to take the plunge.

YOUR WEBSITE AND EMAIL ADDRESS ARE OFTEN YOUR FIRST IMPRESSION

WITH NEW CLIENTS. DO IT RIGHT.

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IT’S EASIER (AND CHEAPER!) THAN YOU THINK

I’d been using free services so long that I’d stopped even thinking about it. So I started doing some research. I learned how

to make a handsome, if basic, website for my translation company. Within three days I saw that my friend had been right:

the change made a world of difference. Suddenly I looked more serious, and clients started complimenting me on my “new

look”. For an hours’ worth of effort and about 100 bucks, I made an awesome improvement in my marketing game.

And, above all, I realized that it wasn’t that

difficult.

When I later co-founded a small translator

cooperative with some friends, they liked my

personal site so much that they asked me to create

our front page for qualiatranslations.com.

I went with a “landing page” website, using a simple

template I found on the internet. Nothing fancy:

• An intriguing photo with a button to get in

touch with us

• A brief explanation of our services

• A contact form.

And that was it! I found the process easy enough, and decided to make this guide to share with fellow translators. Please

feel free to share with anyone, if you find it useful!

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GETTING READY: HOW IT ALL WORKS

Most translators will be very well suited with the setup I used for Qualia Translations: a basic “landing page” site that

combines a professional look with some information about your services and how to contact you. When you’re starting

out, less is more!

Before getting started, however, it’s important to understand the general process behind setting up your own website.

Here’s how it goes:

1. Sign up with a web provider (host)

2. Register your domain name

3. Install Wordpress

4. Choose a theme

5. Customize!

Each of these four steps used to be rather complicated, and a whole industry of “website builders” sprang up to do them

for you. Now there are hosting providers who offer all these services in a package deal at a low price.

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STEP 1: SIGN UP WITH A WEB PROVIDER (HOST)

Your website needs two things to run: a name and a service provider who operates the computer on which the website

runs (the “host”).

I’ve tried a few providers over the years, before finally deciding on bluehost.com* as my main hosting service. It’s

relatively inexpensive and easy to use, and it has a wonderful customer support.

I like their service so much that I’ve teamed up with them to offer a special deal to Translator University readers – half off

the first year of service. (You can click on the image below, or on any of the links on this page).

For this tutorial, I’ll be using Bluehost as my example provider, but the procedure is pretty much the same for other

hosting providers (i.e. Godaddy.com, hostgator.com, etc.). The nice thing about working with Bluehost is that they throw

in the price of registering the domain name for free.

* Please note, I earn an affiliate fee from this service, which helps pay for the upkeep of TranslatorUniversity.com. (But I’d still recommend them even if

they didn’t. ☺)

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SELECT YOUR PLAN When you visit Bluehost for the first time,

you’ll be asked to choose your plan: given

that this is your first website, and you

don’t need much more than a

“placeholder” website, you’re best off

starting with the basic option.

The other plans provided by Bluehost are

for those people who want more than one

website, or who expect greater traffic or

users than a typical translator working on

his or her would need.

Don’t worry, you can always add

additional services later by “upgrading” to

the plus plan if you need.

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STEP 2: CHOOSE YOUR DOMAIN NAME

The next step is to decide how you would like your

website to be called. If you have a company name,

you can choose something similar—typically

XXXtranslations.com are available for the taking.

The general rule of thumb for choosing a domain

name is to pick something that is both easy to

remember and to spell: there’s nothing more

frustrating than having to spell out a difficult email

address to a potential client (and be afraid that

they write it down wrong!).

Your first domain name is free with Bluehost, or

you can enter in another domain name if you

registered it with another provider.

NB: YOUR WEB ADDRESS WILL ALSO BE YOUR EMAIL ADDRESS!

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ACCOUNT SETUP AND OPTIONS Once you’ve chosen your domain name, you’ll be taken to an account creation page. Here is where you enter your billing

information and choose a few options for your domain name.

You have several options to choose from with Bluehost. Other hosting providers provide similar options:

• Account Plan: how many months do

you want to sign up for (the longer you

go, the cheaper you pay). My

recommendation: 2 years.

• Domain Privacy Protection: Hides your

personal info from would-be

spammers. Recommended but not

100% necessary.

• SiteLock Security: Provides security

options for your website. I don’t use it.

• Codeguard Basic: A backup service for

your site. There are Wordpress plugins

that provide this service at a cheaper

price (we’ll explain this later). I

wouldn’t recommend this option.

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STEP 3: INSTALL WORDPRESS

Ok, now it’s time to get down to business. You’ve got your website provider and you’ve got your domain name.

Now comes the website.

Once you’ve created your account and chosen your domain name, you will receive an email from your provider with your

username and password. Save this email somewhere!

Log in to your host account, and you will be presented with a screen like this one:

Press ESCAPE or click on the X to close the popup window.

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SETTING UP WORDPRESS Wordpress is something like the software engine that runs your

website behind the scenes. It is very powerful, and offers many

plugins to control different aspects of how your site should

function.

Find the box of icons that contains the Install WordPress icon

(orange) and click it.

This will take you to a page to install Wordpress.

Press the Green button to install Wordpress. After the software

has been installed, you will be asked to create an admin account

and enter a password.

After WordPress completes its installation, you’ll see a page

saying they sent you an e-mail with the details and you’ll also

be able to click view on that page to see your login details and

login URL.

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You can now log into your Wordpress “Dashboard”, where you can manage and customize all of the options related to

your site. To do so, open your web browser to:

Replacing “superstartranslations.com” with the domain name you registered in Step 2 above. You will be shown a screen

like the one below. Enter in the username and password you chose for Wordpress.

superstartranslations.com/wp-admin

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STEP 4: CHOOSE A THEME

Congrats! Now you’ve got all the administrative set up out of the way, now it’s time to personalize your website!

Remember: Wordpress is a powerful system, and probably way too much for what a translator will need to set up a basic

landing page website. But not to worry, somebody has already done most of the work for you to create a handsome page.

They’re called themes. They allow you to plug in pictures, text and other elements and lay them out in an attractive

manner for you. Here are some examples (clicking on the icons below will take you to the theme site to see a live

preview):

You can choose from one of the thousands of themes available at Themeforest for Wordpress, purchase the theme on the

site and “install” it on your Wordpress Dashboard.

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STEP 5: CUSTOMIZE!

Once you’ve chosen your theme, you can

install it on your Wordpress Dashboard.

Click on “Add New Theme”, and then

“Upload Theme” to upload the theme you

purchased (or pick one of the free options

offered by Wordpress).

Once the installation is completed, you’re

ready to start customizing your website

and enter information about your

translator business.

So now is where things get interesting (finally!). You’re going to have to give some thought to what kind of info you’d like

on your page, and how you’d like it to be presented.

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WHAT TO PUT ON YOUR PAGE

Translator websites generally follow a standard format using four or five main pages. Below you’ll find how I organized the

site for Qualia Translations using this basic formula.

1. A landing page: Often little more than a flashy

photo with name of your business and a simplified

pitch – a few lines about what makes you unique

and/or why customers should choose your

translation services. A “Call to Action” button

(Read More) takes customers to the contact

section below.

2. Services: A page with details about the specific

services you provide. Do you offer proofreading

services? Interpretation? Language consulting?

List them here.

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3. About Me/Us: Provide information about your

professional background and education. Are you a

member of any professional organizations? You

can also include customer testimonials to make

your company seem more trustworthy and

credible.

4. Contact Us: Your address, email, phone number,

the hours you are open for business, and links to

any social media accounts such as Twitter and

Facebook should appear on this page. You can also

embed a Google map of your location to give

potential customers an idea of where you are

located.

And that’s it! Simple, efficient and, above all, rather nice to look at.

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WHERE TO GO FROM HERE? After you have this basic setup, you can start putting Wordpress to use and expand your theme to include all sorts of

useful tools.

• Blog: Your Wordpress website also has a blogging platform built right into it. You can use this to keep your

customers updated about your most recent projects, for example.

• Rate calculator: Clients can submit documents directly on your website and receive quotes based on your pre-set

prices.

• Social networking: Let your customers keep tabs on your work through different social networks like LinkedIn,

Facebook and proz.com.

• Client feedback: Your website is the perfect place to put positive feedback you have received from your customers

and clients.

• Translator management: Some translators use their website as online translation portals using third-party software

to keep track of their outsourcing and other translators.

And much, much more!

Of course, a website won’t do all your marketing work for you. But it is an important tool, the start to your online

marketing efforts.

FOR MORE IDEAS ON HOW TO USE YOUR WEBSITE TO ITS FULLEST, SIGN UP HERE!

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THANKS FOR READING, I HOPE YOU ENJOYED IT!

If you’ve found this useful, or if you have any suggestions on how to improve this guide, I would LOVE to

hear from you! You can subscribe to updates to Translator University by clicking here, or you can email me

at greg@translatoruniversity.com, or leave comments on the website!

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