| Pages in topic: < [1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11] > | Blast your CV to 16000 Agencies? Has anyone tried it? Thread poster: Silvia M.
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| Spamming issues aside | May 17, 2013 |
They all pay about 2c per word translation and 1c per word editing. It comes to some $4-5 per page of text.
Do you really want to pay $99 to start receiving hundreds of e-mails from agencies that pay peanuts?
| | | | Neil Coffey 
United Kingdom
Local time: 13:21
French to English
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| Interesting points from Samuel | May 18, 2013 |
Samuel Murray wrote: Neil Coffey wrote:
So in practice what happens is that the "agency" will be receiving on a daily basis a number of e-mails from different people that, due to their formulaic similarity, blatantly look like I think that a human resources person prefers it if applicants follow a set formula, even if that means being unable to distinguish easily between human and non-human senders, because sticking to a convention saves time and effort for the recipient.
OK, I take your point-- one man's meat is another man's spam as it were...
But be that as it may, my impression is that a lot of the e-mails sent by these systems really really do just look like spam from any perspective.
I understand that many freelancers have unfortunately been added to such lists and therefore regularly receive applications that are completely irrelevant to them, but that is not because the list idea is a bad idea -- it is simply because they're not suppose to be on the list.
Agreed -- just that the fact that I and other freelancers are receiving these e-mails does put a question mark over the quality and usefulness of the list of "agencies" that you are being sold. There's a difference between buying a list of 16,000 genuine "agencies" that are always actively looking for new freelancers versus a list of 16,000 random people that are probably not actually recruiting and are just going to delete your e-mail. I mainly wanted to share my anecdotal evidence that the situation may be closer to the latter.
[Edited at 2013-05-18 01:21 GMT]
| | | | Karel Kosman
Czech Republic
Local time: 14:21
Czech to English
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| I'm not a spammer | May 19, 2013 |
Hi, just stumbled on this thread. I've been offering this service for more than 10 years. Only real competition I know of is translationdirectory, as he used to work for me collecting email addresses of translation agencies. But he sells his list, which I don't. Each of my mailouts has an easy unsubscribe link at the bottom, so these recipients are interested in receiving applications. Unfortunately, it seems that a few months ago the industry started getting spammed with tons of applications. I... See more Hi, just stumbled on this thread. I've been offering this service for more than 10 years. Only real competition I know of is translationdirectory, as he used to work for me collecting email addresses of translation agencies. But he sells his list, which I don't. Each of my mailouts has an easy unsubscribe link at the bottom, so these recipients are interested in receiving applications. Unfortunately, it seems that a few months ago the industry started getting spammed with tons of applications. I've only been sending out about two a month. All of these new spams are either from yahoo.com, gmail or hotmail email addresses. For a while I was going through my spam folder (about 40 new applicants a day), responding to them, but didn't seem to get responses from any of them. Almost all now go into my spambox and I leave them there. My sendouts do not end in gmail's spambox, but I can see that many who may not have such good spam protection would get frustrated by this recent bombardment. It seems as if some robot has been created to send these out with fake identities. Anyway, all those testimonies on my site are real, and most of them include contact information to the translator using my service, so you are welcome to contact them and confirm that they were truly happy with my service. The recipients want to receive more applications, the translators are serious enough to approach the agencies to pay something (most of my customers are long established translators simply looking for more work), and I am only facilitating this process. I do not consider it spam but a good service. ▲ Collapse
| | | | | Thanks Karel, | May 20, 2013 |
I'll look for that link next time, probably tomorrow.
C
Karel Kosman wrote:
Each of my mailouts has an easy unsubscribe link at the bottom...
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| A few questions | May 21, 2013 |
Karel Kosman wrote:
Each of my mailouts has an easy unsubscribe link at the bottom, so these recipients are interested in receiving applications.
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I do not consider it spam but a good service.
OK. Let me ask you this then:
- Are the 16,000 email addresses from people who opted in to your list? If this is not the case, what method did you use to collect the addresses? It is hard to believe you gathered them one by one checking translation agency websites.
- When you send the emails, do you send them from your own domain, clearly identifying your company as a provider of the service, or instead do you customise the email so that it looks like it was sent by your customer, including the reply-to address?
- Why are there no dates in your testimonials?
[Edited at 2013-05-21 05:13 GMT]
| | | | Samuel Murray
Netherlands
Local time: 14:21
Member (2006)
English to Afrikaans
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| | Dated testimonials, very important in this case | May 21, 2013 |
I see your point Samuel, but precisely in the case of the "service" in question, dated testimonials are a must because of the quick loss of relevance of candidate emails over the last years, as a result of precisely this "service", other similar "services" and spam in general with false candidates in our industry.
I hope you find my other questions interesting.
| | | | Samuel Murray
Netherlands
Local time: 14:21
Member (2006)
English to Afrikaans
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| Your other questions, and more comments | May 21, 2013 |
Tomás Cano Binder, CT wrote:
I hope you find my other questions interesting.
I have no problem with your other questions, which I why I did not comment on them. It would be interesting to see the responses to them.
My guess is that this is not an opt-in list, but an opt-out one. This is why I asked about legal issues, because many EU countries do not accept opting out as an acceptable spam mechanism. The opt-out paradise of the spam world is the United States.
My own opinion about harvesting e-mails from web sites is that if you publish an e-mail address on a public web site, then by your action you "opt in" to receive mails relating to the reason that your e-mail is on the web site. However, EU spam legislation commonly distinguishes between private and commercial recipients, and between service providers and service buyers, which makes it a bit murkier. I have always wondered how an EU court would deal with such spam, because of this one question: Are we agencies' clients or are agencies our clients?
As for the quality of the list: the fact that the list owner sends the mails himself means that he can remove invalid e-mail addresses from the list himself. If he had simply sold the list, then there would be little incentive to trim the list of invalid addresses. His e-mails also contain unsubscribe links... yes, I *know* that most of us who get spam don't use those links, but the fact is that in this case there is a valid opportunity for recipients to opt out of the list. If he had simply sold the list, recipients would have had no way to opt out anyway.
Suppose you want to create such a list and you want to get authorisation from each agency to be on the list, and you decide to phone them individually -- who should you speak to to be certain that the permission that was given over the phone is really valid permission from the agency?
Samuel
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Karel Kosman
Czech Republic
Local time: 14:21
Czech to English
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Hi again, when I first hired someone more than ten years ago (owner now of a competing service) to collect email addresses of translation agencies, he did it manually, as per my understanding. Now he sells the list. Since then I have picked up more email addresses from other sources, so all opt-out. Recently I hired a marketing company to make changes to the webpage and they suggested to remove the dates from the testimonials. Before that I'd ask the translators about three months after each bla... See more Hi again, when I first hired someone more than ten years ago (owner now of a competing service) to collect email addresses of translation agencies, he did it manually, as per my understanding. Now he sells the list. Since then I have picked up more email addresses from other sources, so all opt-out. Recently I hired a marketing company to make changes to the webpage and they suggested to remove the dates from the testimonials. Before that I'd ask the translators about three months after each blast. For practicality reasons each email looks as though the translator sent it from their own email address and identity, with own Reply-to, so that they can deal directly with their new customer. Sent from my own server with own IP address, to avoid the spambox, tested on gmail before sending, each email sent separately at intervals of one every four seconds. I think most people wouldn't know how to effectively send out 16,000 emails to avoid the spambox. Sometimes recipients unsubscribe, sometimes they ask the translator, who forwards the letter to me and I unsubscribe them manually. After one purchase of an email list there were a lot of unsubscriptions, and I found a lot of duplications in terms of different people within the same organization, but that was more than a year ago and the list is cleaned up now. What concerns notion of "spamming", what is the difference between this and each translator going to the trouble of collecting the email addresses themselves? They still don't know the name of the person to address (mine has that option but must be filled in by the agency), and they're still going to use their own template cover letter and attach a CV to the email. So end result is the exact same. I did this for myself and decided to offer this service to others. I send out about two a month, the contact information to the translator testimonials should definitely still be active. I can add back the testimony dates but would rather discuss this first with the marketing company who redid the page.
[Edited at 2013-05-30 02:03 GMT] ▲ Collapse
| | | | Karel Kosman
Czech Republic
Local time: 14:21
Czech to English
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| pays more than peanuts | May 21, 2013 |
oh, and someone mentioned that they can expect to receive peanuts in payment. This is not true at all. That testimonial was from one Russian who had problems dealing with western agencies and instead chose to accept high volume work from agencies in his own country (as he stated in his testimony). The list is across the board. There is obviously more competition for English to Russian translations, so the offer could be lower, but not necessarily if dealing with an agency located in the west. I'... See more oh, and someone mentioned that they can expect to receive peanuts in payment. This is not true at all. That testimonial was from one Russian who had problems dealing with western agencies and instead chose to accept high volume work from agencies in his own country (as he stated in his testimony). The list is across the board. There is obviously more competition for English to Russian translations, so the offer could be lower, but not necessarily if dealing with an agency located in the west. I've used the list myself with good results, as confirmed by those who left a testimony. ▲ Collapse
| | | | | It is spam, and why | May 21, 2013 |
Karel Kosman wrote:
What concerns notion of "spamming", what is the difference between this and each translator going to the trouble of collecting the email addresses themselves?
Your service is spam because it is indiscriminate. A literary translator translating Armenian into Hindi would write to the same 16,000 people as a legal translator doing Italian into English, and you don't even know whether the email applies or is minimally interesting to the 16,000 people you spam, basically because you never asked them (you simply grabbed their addresses), or only asked a fraction of them and some time ago.
Sorry, but your emails are unsolicited, bulk, and indiscriminate... therefore spam.
[Edited at 2013-05-21 09:32 GMT]
| | | | | Post removed: This post was hidden by a moderator or staff member because it was not in line with site rule |
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Samuel Murray
Netherlands
Local time: 14:21
Member (2006)
English to Afrikaans
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| TranslationDirectory's list | May 21, 2013 |
Silvia M. wrote: Karel Kosman wrote:
Only real competition I know of is TranslationDirectory, as he used to work for me collecting email addresses of translation agencies. I have just had a look at your "only competitor" ... It is almost worth it starting a new topic on the forum to ask people what they think about this list.
See here:
http://www.proz.com/forum/getting_established/243451-should_i_buy_translation_directory.html
and here:
http://www.proz.com/forum/translator_resources/221786-translation_directorycom.html
As far as I can see he has used an opt-in option for the contacts on his list.
Well, I can't disprove that. Even if you were to e-mail the people on the list after you bought it, to ask them if they had consented to be on the list, not everyone who consented would remember having consented.
However, I had a look at his sample from the database and I found that about half of the agencies on the sample list have web sites and/or have profile pages in either ProZ.com or in the other unmentionable sites, and about half of the remaining agencies who don't have web sites do have mentions on e.g. LinkedIn etc.
[Edited at 2013-05-21 13:36 GMT]
| | | | John Fossey
Canada
Local time: 08:21
Member (2008)
French to English
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| Mailing to lists | May 21, 2013 |
When I first started out I bought such a list - it was an opt-in list, as I recall - and sent it out. I still get the occasional client from that first mailing many years ago, from agencies who filed my mail away back then and have kept it ever since. And I don't work for peanuts.
I don't need to any more, but the clients I have obtained in this way have seemed to be grateful for the contact they had on file when they needed it. I don't recall ever getting negative feedback - more l... See more When I first started out I bought such a list - it was an opt-in list, as I recall - and sent it out. I still get the occasional client from that first mailing many years ago, from agencies who filed my mail away back then and have kept it ever since. And I don't work for peanuts.
I don't need to any more, but the clients I have obtained in this way have seemed to be grateful for the contact they had on file when they needed it. I don't recall ever getting negative feedback - more likely would be a boiler-plate response asking me to complete an online form.
[Edited at 2013-05-21 13:51 GMT] ▲ Collapse
| | | | Karel Kosman
Czech Republic
Local time: 14:21
Czech to English
+ ...
| indiscriminate sending | May 22, 2013 |
what concerns that argument, because of the net any agency located anywhere in the world can work for any customer and send that work to any translator. I translate from Czech to English and have received some work from an agency located in India, for example. They also paid an acceptable price. They can be more competitive because their overhead costs are lower, so they can reduce their margins and offer a better price to their customer while paying the same to the translator. They do not need ... See more what concerns that argument, because of the net any agency located anywhere in the world can work for any customer and send that work to any translator. I translate from Czech to English and have received some work from an agency located in India, for example. They also paid an acceptable price. They can be more competitive because their overhead costs are lower, so they can reduce their margins and offer a better price to their customer while paying the same to the translator. They do not need to pay peanuts just because they are located in India. If anyone manually collects email addresses of agencies, will they really spend the time to research exactly what language combinations they offer? Many agencies offer many language combinations simply because the net allows them to. For each mailout I make sure that the language combination, perhaps expertise and maybe price is in the subject. In the least near the top of the cover letter. The fact that few are unsubscribing shows that the recipients are happy with this system. I think many who are disgruntled on this thread are so because they resent the increased competition. But 85% of people speak at least two languages, jobs are dwindling, many love the prospect of working at home to spend more time with family, and this is the easiest way to get your foot into the industry, or for an established translator to pick up new customers. But Proz is an excellent tool too. ▲ Collapse
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