How to get clients as a freelance writer in Germany
Published on March 3, 2021 / Updated on November 9, 2022
Jakob contributes to the Lingoda blog as a freelance writer. He also writes for an ever changing list of other clients. Finding work and writing gigs is part of his freelancing life! He has to make sure he has a backlog full and make sure he has enough customers. In this blog, Jakob shares his tips on how to get clients as a freelance writer in Germany.
Client acquisition is the part of the job most freelancers dislike, because you don’t see an immediate return on your invested time and you have to get the attention of potential customers and sell yourself and your services well. However, if you don’t actively look for new work, you won’t get paid once your current projects run out. Get started early and check out which of the following work best for you!
Please note: as a freelancer, I’m location independent and work remotely almost exclusively; I’m assuming you are, too. The compilation below will serve you if you’re working from Germany, but won’t necessarily mean you’re working with only German clients. However, content targeting the German-speaking market (the D-A-CH region of Germany, Austria and Switzerland) appears to be in particular high demand for the time being. If you can write in both English and German, you’re likely to have your pick among clients.
Here’s how to work in Germany without speaking German
Job boards are websites and lists you have to scour yourself for freelance work matching your expertise and criteria. Some cater specifically to freelancers or writers, others mix all kinds of jobs and work. It can be annoying because many websites require you to register with them in order to apply for jobs or see details. On the plus side, having a profile often enables you to create custom alerts or save your recurring searches.
Here’s how to ace your job interview in German
On portfolio platforms, you create a showcase of your skills, experience and work samples and let clients find you. If you want to register on a couple of these, it’s a repetitive and tedious process to go through all the details time and again, but on the upside, you’ll only have to do it once and then update your portfolio with new samples.
What is the level of German needed for a visa in Germany?
A content agency offers content production services to companies and clients and typically works with both in-house writers and a pool of freelancers to provide content for specific markets and in various languages. If you can get on the roster of an agency, you can hope to get a more or less steady stream of work which fits your skills.
Groups of other writers and writing professionals are a great resource to find freelance work. Browse Facebook to find places such as Writing for Profit or Write Jobs, which also exists in a newsletter format and a premium list.
There are freelance platforms out there which I personally find exhaustive, because the pay is less than great and you have to put a lot of effort and hassle into either finding quality jobs or maintaining your rating in order to appear in search results. The list of these is long, but I’m including Fiverr, Upwork, and Freelancer.com because they take high commissions while offering freelancers very little.
Other sites such as People per Hour are somewhere on the brink of this; ultimately, you have to decide what works for you. I’m not saying you can’t make a living on Fiverr or Upwork, but in my experience, these sites were not worth my time.
Don’t say these things in your German job interview
Networking still includes the element of “who you know” – it still happens that one client will recommend you to another and you suddenly have requests for work seemingly without having to invest in acquisition.
To facilitate this, it helps to have a ‘virtual business card’, in other words, your own website or online portfolio. It looks professional and impressive if you can showcase your most important samples on your own domain and have your own email address. There are various options available, such as hosting your own WordPress installation or getting a Squarespace site.
When you publish your own content in order to attract attention and visitors to your website, write about your passions – publish in the niche that truly interests you instead of trying to tell clients why content writing is important so they should hire you.
If you manage to build a dedicated following and a loyal audience, you can also try and monetise your particular content through a tip jar on your website, through Patreon memberships or with a premium newsletter on Substack.
Are you looking for gigs as a general freelancer? Read our guide to finding work as a freelancer in Germany!