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Creative work in germany

Last activity 07 March 2018 by Cat.bateman

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Cat.bateman

Hello, Im Catalina

i moved recently to Germany and i would like to have some advice if possible about creative work in here, im a graphic designer, photographer and i work on digital marketing as well and im a little bit lost of how to re-start my career from here.

Freelance work would be ideal, what is the best thing to do in here in the creative areas?


(im currently learning the language and im a new mother so an advice will be great to have)


thank you all!

beppi

Freelancing can give you great flexibility regarding work time and location, which is great for a fresh mother. But on the other hand, you have no guarante for continuous work or income, and like in all self-employed professions you must work a lot more than employed people to be successful.
That said, in the artistic field it is especially important to understand your customers and make yourself understood. Plus, you need to prevail in contract and price negotiations and menouvre the complicated Germ,an officialdom (business registry, tax authority, etc.). I don't think it is advisable to attempt this without near native language skills.

TominStuttgart

The German employment office is known as the Arbeitsamt. They can possibly give you some advice. Possibly they can even get some job offers for you. If you need flexibility maybe there are some part time jobs. But lining up freelance work means you are pretty much on your own. You should then set up a good website and go out and see what others are doing in this area. Try to go to events or places you might meet other photographers or designers. They can best say what areas might have the best opportunities.

Some people do pretty well getting freelance jobs in different areas over a website called fiverr.com. The concept is that one will do a very minimal job for 5 dollars, but of course what they are looking for is bigger jobs and then they set the price. I have used this site for finding people to do translation work. A friend of mine virtually lived from work over this site for a couple of years doing video work and writing custom songs. He stopped because he didn’t like the rules about copyrights. From what I understand, anything produced for a customer over the site means you as the creator give up all rights to it. I don’t want to get into this subject but it really depends whether or not this is a big issue for you. I don’t know of other similar websites off hand but I would not be surprised if they exist.

For any freelancer, word of mouth is the best publicity. This means making sure your clients are happy so they recommend you to others.

Cat.bateman

thank you for your advice, im indeed trying hard to learn the language asap, you have any advice for freelancers in here?

Cat.bateman

thank you for your reply on the subject im certainly checking on the places you advice.

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