Booking clients

I will go the opposite way of others. I have found it quite easy to find people to shoot for free. don't see why that should really be hard. reach out to local models wherever your at. any halfway decent sized town or city will be crawling with people who want to be models willing to come out and shoot for free. I have generated several paying jobs from people i have shot for free. Time is money. and marketing yourself is money as well. I have worked with local dance groups getting some shots of them for practice. free shoot sure. and because of that I won over a dozen new fans of my work and now have a dozen new people telling friends about me. I tell people upfront i'm shooting them for free and in return if they can send paying clients my way. I explain the free shoot stays between us. this way they know the reason why I am shooting them is to help expand my network of people. because I say lets keep the free shoot between us they feel like they are more speacial that I was willing to do that for them. I just had lunch this week with another dance group about a shoot that i'm doing more as a project for them and myself. well the dance coreographer works for a jeweler and says he has engaged couples coming in all the time that he could tell about me. Doing a free car shoot for the president of a car club got me a paid shoot for there club where i shot several of there cars in a night. Free shoots can work as long as your working with people who are in your demographic (go to your business plan to find your demographic) and who are the type of person who will help generate you free work. Don't just run out and shoot anyone for free. because chances are very few of them will be someone who can get you work. You have to be selective with wh you work with and find people that will benefit your business.

That was kind of what I had in the back of my mind.. Sounds like you've been pretty successful.

nope, scaping by, but im picking up things here and there. and half of what I have been able to pickup has been thru free shoots. But as I said, you really have to take a look at who and what your doing free shoots for. if you do go about it the wrong way you can be looked on as the cheap free photographer as others have said, its really easy to fall into. I have turned down free shoots left and right. Be choosey, it may sound a bit crappy but you really need to look at what will benefit you and your company and what won't benifit you and stand firm on that decision. I'm scraping by, but I have still turned work down that won't benefit me, even paying work because someone wanted me to work for cheap. you have to look at every shoot as wether or not if will help you. If you can get benefit out of a shoot then that is worth money. if your shooting free and there is no benefit for you then your wasting money.
 

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