On their blog Judy and Dagmar Jenner discuss the benefits of working with direct clients and review the 5 myths they hear most often:

Direct clients are difficult to work with. Sure, some clients are more challenging to communicate with than others, but the vast majority of their clients are accessible, easy to talk to, and very professional.

Direct clients don’t pay on time. Based on their substantial historical experience, that has not been the case. In ten years, they have only had one client who never paid (he filed for bankruptcy).

Direct clients are never happy. It’s your job to make the client happy; whatever it takes. Without an agency as buffer, you are fully responsible for the customer services experience, and if you want repeat customers, you have to ensure that the experience is outstanding. You will need an editor to proof all your documents. Direct clients expect outstanding work — as they should. They have a five-step quality assurance process, and they make sure that our clients know how thorough it is. If there is a problem, direct clients expect it to be fixed promptly.

Direct clients are impossible to find. While it is true that they are challenging to find, it’s not impossible. Growing a translation business is like any other business: you need to combine an offline and online strategy with outreach and social efforts. The more people know about you, the better. This will, however, take time. There’s no such thing as immediate gratification when it comes to direct customer acquisition, and it requires some patience .

Direct clients are too busy to answer the phone. It is true that most of our clients are extremely busy, but they are typically very much vested in the projects we translate: they have either created the documents or are responsible for their publication. Hence, it’s in their interest to move the project forward.  Of course, some clients might be too busy at a given time, but it is your job to try to get the question answered, perhaps by an assistant or by e-mailing or calling a few times.

See: Translation Times