how to Find Clients ?

[Christos_2006]

What path of a photographic career are you looking to pursue? weddings, portraits, sports, commercial, fashion?

In all honesty you will never find the holy grail on how to obtain clients on an open forum or any forum for that matter. Because if someone does know, they will not give up that information. Remember that actual photography is only about 20% or so in this business, the other 80% is how to properly run a successful business, so yes communication is important.
Basic business sense must prevail here, create business cards, a brand, website and go meet and talk to people.

Long Island wedding photographer

 

[KmH]

I'm going to be really honest here and it's meant to help in the best way possible.

I get the impression English is a second language for you. There is nothing wrong with that. However, a photography business needs quite a bit of paperwork that will be read by your clients: Advertising, pricing and package descriptions, contracts, model releases, print releases, emails, etc. A lack of capital letters, improper grammer and language usage fail to make a good first impression, an important ingredient for success.

Unless you have a close personal support network that can assist you with the typing and language skills you are showing here, you'll have difficulty attracting clients from a broad spectrum of your community. Upgrade your written communication skill as soon as possible.

More importantly, you won't be able to attract the kind of clients that will allow you to charge prices high enough to not only sustain your business, but to also pay you a living wage that also provides for your family and your retirement .

Do what works for you, rather than copying what other new photographers are doing because as the above survey shows, most of them are doing it wrong.

Having a camera and the ability to make pleasing images is only part of the equation. Unfortunately, recent surveys show that 95% of all new photography businesses fail within the first 12 month, because the business owners lacked business skills.

You sound motivated and intelligent enough to make a go of it, just be sure you're expending your efforts on the things that are so important for the business. The photography part will tend to take care of itself.

I'm of the opinion that working for cheap or free when starting out is a canard, a trap many new photographers fall into that doom them before they ever really have a chance to get started.

hey , thank you for ur comment . and yes English is my 3rd language , and i totally DISAGREE with you about what you said ?!

paper works and the other stuff , its okay for me to do that kind of stuff ... Yep, I mentioned that might be a possibility.


and if you judging me from just by reading my comments and telling me my English want to work on it more .. welll here we just type fast and say whats on our mind ... Well, it's all I had to go on. Frankly, professionalism is a full time job, even when posting in online forums.

you comparing Official paper works to a Forum that we just write and we don't care about the Grammar stuff .... See my above comment.

i just love photography and lots of family and friends supported me

thanks for your honestly but please don't judge too fast !

Actually, I didn't post most of my thoughts, though your reply here confirms my original impressions.

All the best for you and your new business venture. :thumbup:

 

[jubb]

When starting out it can be through family, and then friends and acquaintances. The facebook fan page is good, every time you update the fan page you should also place a status update on your own page as well. Add everyone you can to facebook. Do some free shoots so you have work to show everyone on facebook that you can turn out goodwork. Then if you are good people will ask to book with you.

Other than that, there is SEO to get yourself in the search engines, talking to everyone you know about your photography(Work, Church, clubs, groups, school... or whoever), join the chamber of commerce and go to their meetings and make friends with people.

You can get gigs by being a people person, kind of the same way real estate agents get their clients.

 

[rlstevens]

THAT IS RIGHT!!

 

[random2]

You guys are to much. lol.. all true and helpfull though.. I just enjoy reading this site.

 

[keith foster]

KmH is right.
Right or wrong, people judge us by how we communicate when we write and speak. AND, if you are trying to build a successful business you must consider EVERYONE that you come in contact with as a potential source of business. Either as a someone who may offer a referral of business or as a direct user of your services and that reinforces the advice that KmH is giving.