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Just making and publishing a site probably won't get you anywhere if you're looking for direct clients or for people to find you. You'll need some good optimization to stand out among all the translators in the world.
I'd amend the phrase above with "... won't get you anywhere quickly if you're...".
It takes an incommensurate amount of time and effort, but it works. My web site is presently my major source of direct clients, and I've never spent one red cent in outsourced SEO.
Over time, I've crammed it with useful/interesting information for translation clients, packed it with the right dose of relevant keywords, so it naturally went up in Google ratings.
However the downside comprises:
1. It takes about five years for such a site to start gaining momentum.
2. It attracts a lot of inviable (and not enviable) requests, such as translating books/subtitling videos for individual use, because some prospects think it's cheap. I have to convince them it's not worth the cost.
3. Most of these direct clients need translation work from once to five times in a lifetime, however all of them together often results in a healthy turnover.
4. Some translation agencies draw a wrong chain of conclusions, such as "translator has site = is desperate = will work for peanuts".
Yet a translator having a web site causes no harm, other than having to delete tons of spam all the time. I have a separate e-mail address published on my web site, so I bulk-delete spam on webmail there, and FWD all interesting first contacts to my main address, to take on from there.
I just wanted to set the record straight on web sites.
IMHO there is NO magic formula that will keep a translator busy all the time (other than despicably low rates). A web site alone won't cut it alone, Proz & alikes alone won't cut it, buying lists and bombarding agency PMs with e-mails alone won't cut it. A combination of these, plus building a good professional reputation built over time should work. References from colleagues and clients are my major source of steady work.
In a nutshell... if you are good at it, IT TAKES TIME!
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