Trying to make a living in the creative field is always hard. And if you are a creative and a freelancer… things get even worse. No matter what field you work in: film, photography, crafts, design, illustration, we are all bound by the daily struggles and unforeseen challenges. But don’t worry, we’ve got you covered. We went to the Berlin Kreativ Konferenz organized by the Berlin Kreativ Kollektiv at the beautiful Colonia Nova space in Neukölln and learned so much about the work of creatives that we are now ready to share this wisdom with you.
We spoke with a lot of the experts from different fields who gave talks and workshops at the two-day-conference about the most important advice they would give. Here are the 9 most important pieces of advice they want to share with any creative getting started in Berlin.
Read on…
by Amanda Artiaga | People, Stories
One of the questions that I get the most as a blogger is not how I come up with my stories or what I want to accomplish with the blog, it’s how I make the blog work as a business, or more specifically: how I make money with it. It’s actually quite a bold question to ask someone, but I can understand where it comes from. Even though blogs have now been around for over 10 years in Germany, it still is a fairly new medium – people have a lot of questions about it.
The magic words are “brand collaborations”. If you want to break it down into more simple terms you could also call it advertising, but what we do and how we do it is quite different from traditional advertising that you might know from TV or magazines. We want to explain a little…
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by Frank | Stories
I remember 10 years ago when I started this blog there were no points of reference out there for me. Blogs were just something totally new and we all kind of didn’t know where things would go. I certainly didn’t expect that the blog would one day become the main thing for me taking over my personal and professional life completely. I’m so grateful that I followed my instincts and interests and just went for it. It was a difficult step for me back in 2011 to quit my day job and focus fully on iHeartBerlin, but these six years that came after were more fulfilled and happy than all the time before. I learned so much in these years, it’s a lot of trial and error, testing boundaries, starting over and jumping into the unknown. But the experience and knowledge I gained is something that I never want to miss.
When I became part of Blogfabrik 3 years ago I knew that this would be a place where this knowledge and experience would someday also be transferred to other people starting projects and working in digital media. With the new digital conference Content Creation Week where me and my fellow Blogfabrikanten offer workshops, lectures, keynotes, panel talks, the time has come for me to share with the next generation. From June 18-21 the second edition will take place and I will host a workshop about brand collaborations.
To give you a bit of a taste of my first CCW workshop from 2017 that was about long-lasting and successful content I have gathered my most cherished wisdoms of 10 years of blogging.
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by Frank | Stories
Always wanted to become an Instagram sensation but didn’t quite know what it takes, except tag each pic like crazy? Do you have no idea how to optimize the performance of your project’s Facebook page with concrete strategies, rather than random posts and hope for the best? Is being a writer your secret dream, but only your diary knows about it? MARK YOUR CALENDAR for the 18th to 21th of June 2018. We have something to suggest that will change your digital life!
As some of you know iHeartBerlin is part of a community of digital content creators that all work together at a coworking and project space called Blogfabrik. For the past months we have all been cooking up something quite exciting: The second edition of the Content Creation Week, Blogfabrik’s concentrated effort to provide access to its network’s competence, concerns itself with questions like, how is good content created, and what makes it successful? In 24 workshops, lectures and panels, the members of Blogfabrik will teach us all about the creation, marketing, and distribution of all kinds of digital content that will help you attract attention to your project or business. You will be able to gain knowledge and useful tips from media makers like the amazing Im Gegenteil, Tonspion, Notes of Berlin, Fuck Lucky Go Happy and of course iHeartBerlin! In the evenings we’ll host several parties and an exciting panel talk that are public and for free, so come join us!
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by Stella | Events
Berlin should come with many warnings, and one of them would definitely be that the city’s creative vibes may make you want to try freelancing. Which can be a good thing! To help you get over the paralyzing fear of becoming independent amongst the German bureaucracy, we prepared a succinct guide.
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by Michalina | Stories
photos: The Hundert /Irene Wissel
About 5 years ago Jan Thomas arrived in Berlin with a plan to do “something big” here. His professional background was marketing but his main interest was the thriving startup scene in the city that he didn’t know much about at that point. He started to write about it on his small blog called “Berlin Valley”. While writing, analyzing and reading other blogs and media, he learned very quickly how the scene works, what its problems and needs are. He went to all kinds of events, where he met a lot of people and collected their business cards. After a year he had a large pile of cards lying on his table and Jan began wondering, how he could use all of his new contacts on his blog. First idea – ask the ten most important players he knew to write their statement on the Berlin startup scene. It should be simple but interesting. Yet he struggled to narrow the group down to ten, so broadened the number of participants to fifty and then quickly to a hundred – the concept of the Hundert began to take shape. From this simple idea a new magazine completely dedicated to the startup scene in Berlin was born and the first issue came out in October 2013. Since then 6 issues of the Hundert have been released, with currently 4 editions a year.
We spoke with the editors of The Hundert about the advantages of Berlin as a base, how to start a project, how to network and how to find investors. Read our interview in a new edition of The Berlin Experts after the jump.
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by Olga | People, Stories
