How translators can use AdSense to monetize their translated content

The benefit of knowing one or more foreign languages

The ability to speak and write a language other than your native one has become a valuable skill to have in today’s increasingly globalized world.

Being proficient in one or more foreign languages can open up job opportunities, and in many cases, it is an excellent way to earn money by offering a valued service to other people, doing something that you enjoy and love, at the same time.

Therefore, it is definitely a great benefit to have working knowledge of one or more foreign languages.

Working as a freelance translator

On top of the traditional employment sectors where a multilingual job seeker can find a job, for example, working as a freelance translator for offline and online translation agencies, as well as other private and public companies and individuals, there is certainly plenty of room for a multilingual freelancer to become more creative and inventive in his or her job searching efforts.

Alternative ways to put your translation skills to practice

The growth of the worldwide web has resulted in countless new opportunities for professionals who want to discover, build, and exploit new markets. One such case is the translation industry.

With the tremendous amount of content that is produced on the web on a daily basis, there is always a great opportunity hidden somewhere, i.e. a market gap waiting to be filled by people who are experts in processing the huge amount of online content that is generated daily, and translators fall in that category.

Use your own content

If you are already a writer, regularly posting articles on your own blog and/or contributing content to a writing platform, you can use this content that you have created in English, translate it, and post it on your blog that is published in another language (or languages).

Use other people’s content

If you haven’t written any content of your own, the solution is to use content written and published by other writers. There are so many blogs and websites online, that you will really feel spoilt for choice. So you’d better choose the best of those sites, where you can find quality content to translate.

Should you ask for permission?

Although a large number of blogs and websites do not provide a copyright notice due to negligence or ignorance, this doesn’t mean that this content is not copyrighted. Once content is published online, it is automatically copyrighted, regardless of whether the owner declares it explicitly or not.

Therefore, permission must be granted by the original author to anyone who wishes to use his or her content, for example, in order to translate it in another language.

How to ask for permission to translate content

What you can do, once you have identified the content that you want to translate, is write and send an email message to the owner of the content.

In that message, you should explain how you are going to use the content, and offer the author something in return for using his or her article(s).

One good and effective practice that you can apply, in order to get the permission that you want, could be to offer a link in the body of the translated article, pointing back to the original. This is beneficial for the original article’s SEO, and chances are that it will be well received and accepted by the original writer.

If, after all, the writer does not give you his or her permission to translate the content, you can keep searching for and sending emails to other writers and bloggers, until you find someone who will be willing to accept your offer, and let you translate his or her content.

Where to find content to translate

It would be a good idea to stick your translating efforts to finding and using content in a specific area of interest.

For example, if are a fan of fast cars, you should focus on websites that are related to your topic.

In this way, the original writer, your niche blog, and your readers would all be benefited.

This would also make it easier to approach new content owners in the future, and ask them to let you translate their content, or at least some part of it.

As a result, your primary concern, in order to increase the list of your blog followers and readers, in other words, build an audience, should be focused on providing fresh information on topics that are possibly poorly covered, or not covered at all, in your native language.

The usual suspect as source language would be English, since it is the international language that is spoken all over the world, and there is plenty of English content available online to be translated.

Of course, there is great potential and many opportunities in other languages, as well, and this fact should not be underestimated, especially when it comes to multilingual people who may struggle with English.

How to monetize the content that you have translated

After you have found, got permission to translate, translated, and published content on your blog, it’s time to think of ways to make money out of it.

AdSense is the blog monetization method that comes first to any blogger’s mind nowadays.

One thing that you should take into consideration, if you are going to use AdSense, is that you should have published enough content of good quality first, before you apply to have AdSense ads displayed on your blog.

Alternatively, there are many other types of monetization, e.g. affiliate programs, through which you can earn from your translation efforts.

So that is how you can translate and earn with AdSense, and I wish you good luck with your online translation ventures!

Further reading:

Can I translate YouTube videos and monetize it?

Will this work? Google Adsense + Blog + TRANSLATED content

Can I get paid for translating videos?

How to increase your traffic through content translation