An extremely interesting blog topic! I work from English to Finnish but I have never even heard of anyone in my language pair charging USD 0.35 per word. In my experience, it should be possible to make six figures when working with a rare language, specialized niche and no competition. That is certainly my goal for 2009, and it does not involve 70-hour weeks either. CAT tools are invaluable helpers, though, and setting your rates and sticking to them.

Hmm, must consider raising my rates next year.

Tapani

It’s really cool that you post your rates on your site. Those rates are on the high end but not unheard of for Japanese-to-English work from agencies in Japan. Japanese to English probably takes longer than going between European languages, though. I know I still work faster going from Spanish to English, even though my Japanese is a lot better than my Spanish now.

@Judy, I think you’re so right about the value of direct clients; when one works primarily or exclusively with agencies, unless those agencies pay really, really well, it’s nearly impossible to move up to six figures. Good work to you and Dagy!

I am glad that you are addressing this as well — join the movement, everyone! My twin Dagy and I strongly agree that the “secret” behind our success has been working (thus far) with 100% direct clients, who are less price sensitive, don’t treat you as an exchangeable peon, and are grateful to work with professionals. This morning, we got a project from one of our favorite direct clients here in Las Vegas, and they accepted our usual rate (there is no “best” rate — there’s just one rate) without hesitation.

Here’s to charging higher rates and to making 100 K a year, everyone! I also think that price transparency is a good thing. Our rates are not a secret: there’s a rate sheet on our web site.

Corinne: I too grew up in NJ, but they had Japanese in high school by the time I was leaving.

I think you nailed the two main paths to reach those income levels: charge high rates or work very quickly (or best of both worlds – both! . Both of these require very good expertise in the subject area: the first to provide enough value to command high rates, and the second to minimize the need for research/dictionary work.

Working long hours only pays off for so long — study after study has shown that when knowledge workers (that’s us!) work long hours (more than 40/week), productivity rapidly drops off, and total output is often lower than those working 40 hours.

And I think you’re also right that it’s hard to keep up that income if you don’t like your job.

@Susanne, I bet that you met some six-figure people at the conference! In some cases I’ve extrapolated, my assumption being that anyone who charges 35 cents a word and describes themself as being “swamped” is doing, um, pretty well!