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Regardless of how long you’ve been living in Düsseldorf (expat or local), how many of you have had one of these two issues?

Ourselves or our partner have been on the search for a new job and despite our/their many talents, haven’t found one
We’ve needed help on a small project, but ended up having to pay premium fees for workers like handymen, electricians, movers and cooks

There’s a good chance that regardless of your nationality or the language you speak, you’ve run into 1 or 2 of these issues on a frequent basis (plus without knowledge of the German language, it doesn’t make things easier).

And, what if I told you that we’ve just found a way to solve both these issues, here in Düsseldorf, in just one shot?

This blog post was paid for by labooyo.de. We take the quality of our website very seriously and only ensure the best content to be published, regardless of sponsored or non-sponsored content. We trust and love all the brands we work with, enough to recommend them to you, our loyal readers!

Meet labooyo.de

labooyo is about to become your new best friend and you’ll be thanking me later for sharing this post with you (trust me). labooyo is a German startup based here in North Rhine-Westphalia (and actually founded by an expat too)! It is an online platform that allows people to connect with service providers for one-off jobs like:

Craftsmen (home repairs, gardening, electrical work, installations, etc.)
Cooks (expert cooks, grillmasters or even moms that simply love to cook)
Movers (people with moving vans, help carrying furniture, help moving in/out)
Party Hosts (DJ’s, face painting, henna tattoos, bachelor parties, nails, makeup etc.)
Others (manicurist, babysitter, dog-sitter, tutor, German teacher, photographer, etc.)

It is a completely free platform, which means you can register as a guest or as a freelancer at no cost.

BONUS: The labooyo platform is hosted in both English and German

As featured in the photo above, Patience is a babysitter and child’s party host. She’s full of energy and loves working her labooyo side job while in school.

Of course, you have the option of finding professional services online that offer all of the above, but that’s what makes labooyo special. labooyo.de is a place for freelancers (both amateur and professional) to offer their services at freelance prices (not industry standard prices). So, instead of paying 250 Euro for a 5-minute dishwasher repair from ABC Electrician, you can hire a freelance electrician on labooyo for 15 or 20 Euro per hour (not the gas and drive time + service fees + labor fees + etc.)

This is not “under the table work” or “Schwarzarbeit“, these are registered freelancers who claim their income made on labooyo at the end of the year like any other self-employed person in Germany.

To give you a better understanding as to how you can benefit by using this platform, let’s look at both sides:

Registering as a Service Provider and Making Money
Registering as a Customer and Saving Money

Registering as a Service Provider and Making Money

Whoever said you needed to be an expert in anything to start making a little bit of money? Whoever said you needed a boss to have a job? Whoever said you can’t do it on your own? Forget what everyone else told you. You can do it.

labooyo is the perfect platform to allow you to make some money, extend your services to new customers, manage all your clients in one organized desktop and find out you have a few more skills than you might have actually realized.

If you’re interested in becoming self-employed in Germany, Life in Düsseldorf has a full section on the site dedicated to providing you with the best tips to getting started.

Looking for some inspiration? I have a few ideas:

Can you cook great Indian food at someone’s house? You don’t have to be a professional chef!
Are you good at crafts? Why not consider hosting kids’ birthdays?
Are you handy around the house? Have some muscles? Why not help people move?
Are you around Düsseldorf anyways? Why not offer to housesit or watch someone’s cat?
Are you good with the elderly? Why not offer to come to check up on some folks?
Do you love gardening? Help someone out with color coordinating their garden!
Passionate about hair and make-up? Offer to come to parties, weddings, or private homes!

See? There are a million options and ideas that we can work with. If you don’t have a business or are not yet registered as a freelancer, don’t worry, this expert-written guide to Freelancing in Germany will help you get started. Don’t let excuses get it in the way, it’s actually easier than you may think.

Once you’re ready to go, set up your profile on labooyo, decide when you want to work, and set your own hourly price.

Registering as a Customer and Saving Money

Consider labooyo to be your little helper when it comes to everyday tasks. Have a hot date and need someone to watch the kids? Just broke the shower faucet and need someone to quickly fix it? Looking for a family photoshoot but don’t want to pay hefty package fees? These are all small jobs that you can find on labooyo, and they’re all extremely simple to book. All you will need to do is request a time and date for the service provider to come and help you and they will confirm if it works for them too.

Here are a few service providers on the site already:

Jennifer does hair, makeup, cleaning, and dog-sitting
Salvatore can DJ any event you’d like to host
Aamena can be hired for parties or small get-togethers to do henna tattoos
Christopher and Peter help you with gardening and lawn maintenance

To give you a better idea of what to expect, I decided to hire my own service provider for the evening.

My husband and I recently purchased a house and have been in renovation mode for quite some time. We’re finally reaching an end, and while we both love saving money and putting in our own elbow grease to get the work done, we still had a few odd jobs that needed to be done by someone who knows what they’re doing.

Installing our bathroom mirror (the hook needs to be drilled into the tiles)
Installing a cable box on the wall so that all our internet cables are safely tucked away
Installing a shower rod and curtain

So, we hired Jozef on labooyo, an all-around handyman from Duisburg. I explained ahead of time what needed to be done at the house, confirmed the time and date and Jozef received all the details he needed from me in order to make it happen.

You know? Those little projects that we all have, we just don’t know who to call because the project is too small to pay big bucks to hire a company but too big (or difficult) for us to finish on our own. That’s exactly what labooyo is perfect for!

What was my experience like?

I figured the whole process should take about 2-hours, so I hopped on labooyo, sent Jozef a booking request, picked the time and date that worked for me, and waited for approval. Jozef accepted my offer, I made the payment on the labooyo platform, and the money wasn’t released to Jozef until I had confirmed the job had been finished and I was satisfied.

Of course, if you weren’t satisfied, you also have the option to make a complaint before you click “task completed” so that the issues can be resolved before the service provider gets paid.

Of course, that wasn’t the case with Jozef. He was a hard and efficient worker, he got the job done perfectly and now my attic apartment looks great!

So I jumped back on labooyo, gave him a 5-star rating with an excellent review, and allowed the platform to send over his payment for a job well done.

I am thrilled that we finally have a platform like labooyo in NRW where we can hire service providers of all sorts to help us out with odd jobs in our daily lives. I’m looking forward to helping labooyo gain more customers and service providers on the site so that expats and locals (like myself) have an opportunity to get the help they need at an affordable price and grab the opportunity to make some money as a freelancer.

Here’s a little 35-second video I shot of Jozef in action so that you could get a better idea of what odd jobs around the house I had him doing.