How do you prospect the freelance market?

How do you prospect the freelance market for interpreting? How do you survive without AIIC’s closed shop? Is the market that saturated?

Sorry, I don’t know much about the interpreting market. To find out what life is like outside AIIC you need to identify other people who are not in it, of course, which becomes more difficult because they are presumably not in a group so not easy to spot. Why not identify some new or candidate members of AIIC and ask what life was like before? Or get in touch with specialist interpreters’ agencies and ask whether they employ non-AIIC members, what percentage of their work goes to them etc.? I am sure such agencies exist, there is one (used to be one?) in Leeds.

As far as market saturation is concerned – people say the same thing about translation, i.e. it is an overcrowded field, hard to break in etc. – but new translators still get established, each one has a different story involving skill, persistence and luck, not necessarily in that order. I’d appreciate interpreters’ views on this question, please.