It’s twenty years since I first came up with the idea of setting up a small copywriting agency. I was working as a property journalist on a local weekly, while my then-boss attempted to find freelance contributors to augment my own daily output. He consistently chose people within a twenty-mile radius of our office in Glasgow, and they were consistently poor. Before long, inspiration struck – I could be the dependable, high-calibre local freelance writer the market clearly needed.

Two years later, I founded G75 Media, naming it after the suburb of East Kilbride where I was living at the time to emphasise our Lanarkshire origins. I chose an accountant in Helensburgh, hired a Renfrewshire-based web design company to build the first-generation G75 Media website, and imagined being a local writer for local people across Lanarkshire – or maybe Glasgow if I was feeling adventurous.

A local business with a global profile

As it transpired, Lanarkshire did not embrace the new copywriting agency at its heart, and Glasgow didn’t rush to engage my services, either. Instead, I worked with companies in Edinburgh and across England, before recruiting my first foreign client in 2015. Since then, I’ve been taken on by overseas clients in the Netherlands, Singapore, Ireland, Australia and America – where a third of today’s G75 Media client roster is headquartered.

Working for overseas clients can be rewarding and inspiring, introducing you to new cultures and offering the prestige of being chosen ahead of that nation’s indigenous freelancers. However, it requires some lateral thinking, a relaxed approach to working hours and an exhaustive knowledge of linguistic idioms in foreign countries. For any freelancers considering the merits of seeking international custom, these are some of the key things to be aware of…

• 1. Time zones

If you believe work should end at 5pm GMT (or BST), working for overseas clients is not for you. By that time, it’s lunchtime on America’s east coast and Californians are only just firing up their MacBooks. I have emails arriving throughout the evening from my Stateside clients, which I feel obligated to respond to, so they don’t have to wait until the following day to get a reply.

Conversely, Singapore is seven hours ahead of the UK, so if a client emailed me during their working day, it’d be in my inbox as soon as I started work. I’d then feel duty bound to respond straight away to avoid making them wait overnight for a reply. You have to be on constant inbox alert when working for overseas clients, as well as being willing to hold video calls at relatively unsociable hours.

• 2. Languages

Having grown up in Scotland, I know what words like dreich, scunnered and bampot mean. Having not grown up in Australia, I don’t know their equivalents. Yet working for overseas clients means learning each nation’s slang, syntax and jargon. I write for an American car website every week, where I have to incorporate their nouns, measurement systems and cultural references.

As a freelancer, you’re unlikely to need to know the distinctions between the Portuguese language and its Brazilian counterpart, but an awareness that they’re not the same is beneficial – as is knowing that Brazil speaks Portuguese while the rest of South America uses Spanish. Why? To do with history and empire, which is a whole other kettle of fish from contested waters.

• 3. Etiquette

I mentioned cultural references in the last section, but working for overseas clients involves far more than respecting their language and not mentioning Gibraltar. It means acknowledging local customs and religious practices/holidays/traditions, right down to adjusting stock email introductions to reflect indigenous habits. It could even mean working over Christmas but not during Eid-al-Fitr.

Cultural awareness of target markets might involve knowing that Americans call football soccer, Israeli clients won’t respond to you on a Saturday or that Chinese customers regard red as a lucky colour. As with language, there’s no need to scour encyclopaedias about the markets you’re potentially operating in, but you do need to know a few basics to avoid any unnecessary faux pas.

• 4. Billing

When the work is done, and it’s time to request payment, invoicing foreign clients can be fraught. Some will want to pay using platforms like Wise, Stripe or PayPal, which all incur fees and may have varying levels of compatibility with your existing website/bank/accounting software. Before agreeing to work with a foreign company, ensure you’re amenable to its stipulated payment terms.

Many businesses pay via international bank transfer, so put your IBAN number on your default invoice template. Foreign firms might need more information to process payments to overseas contractors. Also, debt recovery becomes exponentially more difficult internationally, with a higher risk of bad debts being incurred, so undertake due diligence before working for overseas clients…

A decade of international copywriting excellence

This article has been written to celebrate the tenth anniversary of G75 Media’s first foreign foray, to advise and support other entrepreneurs and freelancers who are thinking about working for overseas clients. However, if you’re looking for a UK-based writer to undertake English-language content production or journalism, you’re in the right place. Contact us for more information on how G75 Media can bring the world to your website, app or business.