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http://www.profitablestudio.com/archive/archive.html
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It depends on what type of photography you want to do. The biggest thing really that has helped me a lot in photography and which actually got me my first gig (my first gig on my own, that is, cause I was a photographer for a portrait company before) is posting on Craigslist.
If you need a bit of practice, offer some free photo sessions in Craigslist. I have tried offering Free Engagement Sessions and got a good response. I just give them the prints for free (at first I thought about giving a CD since it’s cheaper on my side but you lose out on reprint orders) and one of them actually bought the CD. One of the couples that I did is actually booking us for their wedding. Also, it helps build the portfolio.
When you feel that you are ready, you can post ads on craigslist for pay. If you go to Charleston, South Carolina craigslist (as well as other cities in SC and sometimes in NC and GA as well), you will see that I have 3 different ads running all the time. One is for Weddings, which is what I focus on anyway and is my biggest earner, another is for Portraits and Events, which recently I just did my first birthday party (and it was a big one too, about 200 guests) and the other one is for Boudoir (which I have a separate website for now).
Sometimes if I’m not busy, I look for people looking for photographers in craigslist and answer their ads. I’ve managed to get some stock photography commission work on these.
A lot of my clients do come from craigslist and I know some people say this is the bottom of the market but for now, I’m still starting out, it’s really good. And it helps my website get a higher ranking in google too.
I had my business cards printed in Vistaprint $3.99 for 250 pieces and I leave it at bridal shops and give it out to friends, other wedding vendors and to people I do events for.
What you can also do is you can go to bike events or any event and take pictures of people, then just give them your business card and tell them that they can order prints from your website. Check out my client galleries at http://SilvasPhoto.com/album/ which I made with http://jalbum.net (you have to install the software on your website). Before I used jalbum, I used backprint.com (see http://backprint.com/silvasphoto ) cause you just upload your photos to them and they handle everything from credit card transaction to printing the photo and delivering to client. It’s free, but they charge you 15% of the transaction if you sell something which is not too bad since they handle everything anyway. It’s better than Pictage.com or smugmug wherein you pay a monthly fee whether you sell something or not.
