How to make money as a Freelance Photojournalist
It takes more than just talent to make it as a freelance writer and photographer. To be successful, you must be serious about selling yourself. It doesn't matter what kind of writing or photography you want to do - whether it is photojournalism with a sports magazine or travel writing - you have to market and sell yourself and your talent. Here are some tips on finding and closing those paid assignments.
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Instructions
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1. Identify your Target Market: Spend some time thinking about the kind of writing and photography you want to capture. What is it that you are interested in and will motivate you? Some people are successful by defining a very narrow and specific niche. Some folks make a great living doing not just sports photojournalism, but specifically motorcycle racing photojournalism. However others feel that counting on one basket of eggs is risky. Point is you need to spend some real time thinking about what you want to do. Once I figured out that I wanted to do travel photojournalism, then my potential client list was much simpler to put together.
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2. Identify Target Clients Within Your Market: Once you have figured out the type of photojournalism you want to do, it's time to put together a list of potential paying clients with the intention of querying them for work - that includes figuring out who the point of contact is for selling your talent to. The clearer you can be about your chosen area, the more obvious the target client list becomes. The use of good contact management software can go a long way to aid and tracking your client list. I use MS Outlook to create a database of contacts, note any efforts and queries to market to them, note conversations, and when to follow-up and contact them.
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3. Think Like a Business Person - this is your profession: Be Professional! When querying a potential client, put some thought into the business questions they will be asking. What is the value of your photo-services to my business? Will this help me maintain and grow my clients? What is going to be my return on investment (ROI) for this expenditure? If you can satisfactorily answer these questions in your initial query or proposal to your client, you'll be a head of the competition and well on your way to winning and closing the job.
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