Hey guys, what's going on? Welcome back to the channel. And today I wanted to talk about how to start a freelance photography business in 2024, in the fastest way possible. I think there's a lot of misconceptions about how to build a photography business, and a lot of

upcoming photographers are just not sure the exact steps that they need to take to make this happen. Now, for those of you guys that don't know me, what's up? My name is Sean. I've been a professional travel photographer for the last 8 years,

living between Bali and Thailand and basically traveling full-time through my photography. In my opinion, it's the best job in the world, and I'm excited that you're embarking on your own adventure as well. Now, before I jump into it, if you guys want to learn more about how to

build a successful photography business, check out my free one-hour workshop, which covers the five essential steps that you need to take to make this happen. Okay, so I want to start off this video by talking about something that I've seen in a lot of other videos about

how to start a photography business that I don't necessarily agree with. A lot of these videos will tell you that you have to do all of these different things in order to start a photography business: you need to register a business, you need to get the best camera, you need to get

all these different things, and I don't think that's true at all. I've always found that the best way to start a business is to just start a business; start lean. You don't have to have all of these things in place, and while there are a few different things that I'm

In this video, I'll discuss why you don't need the best gear, business registration, or other prerequisites.  You just need your first client.

That's this video's focus: scoring your first client, getting clients, building a strong portfolio, and attracting more future clients. Starting now, instead of waiting for everything to be perfect, leads to faster and greater success. We can build our businesses as we go. I believe this approach works, and I'm excited to share it with you.

The first step in starting a photography business is overcoming feelings of inadequacy. This sounds basic, but many aspiring photographers lack confidence early on. Those who don't often become very successful.

It's crucial to self-reflect on feelings about starting a photography business.  Maybe you doubt your work, lack time, or feel your gear is insufficient.  Many factors exist, but the biggest is often a lack of confidence—something everyone faces.

Maybe you feel like your work isn't good enough, you don't have the time, or your gear isn't good enough. There are many things, but the biggest one that I see is a lack of confidence, and I think everybody deals with that.

With these feelings of imposter syndrome, myself included, when I was first starting out, I hated my work. It took a few friends to really build up my confidence to the point where I felt like I could actually put myself out there and go score clients and start

making a living from photography. And if you don't think your work is that good, I was making $8,000 to $110,000 per month shooting on a crop sensor camera, delivering photos like this. So you really don't need to be the best

photographer in the world in order to start things out. You just need to be good enough, and you're going to get better as you go. And step number two is to choose an ecosystem. And I do want to talk about gear a little bit because I

think a lot of people really love to obsess about it, and it is important in the sense that it's a tool for us, right? It's a tool for us to capture our creative vision, but it is certainly not everything. I had my first $10,000 month

as a photographer shooting with the Sony a6300 and a 50mm f/1.8 and a 35mm f/1.4 prime lenses. This was a super basic setup; it wasn't full-frame, and it got the job done. Clients didn't know the

difference; the photos looked really good, and because my marketing was so good, I had a lot of clients coming in the door. So when you're going out shopping for gear, choose an ecosystem; don't necessarily focus on getting the best camera in the world. Go with Sony, go with

Nikon and Canon; those are all amazing camera brands, and they're all more than suitable for professional photography. If you're pretty new to photography and just want to start out with a side hustle, pick up an APS-C or crop sensor camera. These are going to be

much cheaper, and they are more than capable of capturing professional photos. On the flip side, you can also pick up a secondhand full-frame camera, something like a Sony a7 III, which is still an incredible camera. You can get a really good deal on that and that will

get you into the full-frame ecosystem so you can start utilizing those full-frame lenses and building a really solid kit to move forward with. But all you really need is gear that's good enough. You can build up your arsenal as you grow as a photographer, and you just need something

to start out with. And if that's a really basic beginner camera, then that's totally fine; you can still earn money with that. Now, step number three is to start building your portfolio, and don't niche down. Now, I know I'm going to get a

lot of hate in the comments for this, but I'm a firm believer that you do not need to select a niche when you're first starting out with photography. The reason for that is because most photographers don't know what they want to shoot early on. The most important

skill that a photographer can have is to be versatile—to be able to shoot in a wide range of lighting environments, to be able to work with a lot of different types of models, to be able to shoot in a wide range of

Scenarios, and the best way to do that is by shooting a lot of different things. If you just select one niche right off the bat, there's a chance that that niche couldn't be profitable, and also you might not be interested in that niche in

two years. So, instead of niching down in the beginning, we can actually build multiple portfolios, and then we can send the relevant portfolio to the client that we're reaching out to. So, for example, in my portfolio, I have a commercial section, I have a portrait section, and I have a landscape section,

and those are three different types of clients that I often work with. And when it comes to building your portfolio, you can build a portfolio in 30 minutes using a platform like Squarespace. This isn't sponsored by Squarespace, but I used them early on in my career and I

still use them today. You can build a really professional website in about 30 minutes, and there's a ton of tutorials on YouTube that can show you how to do that. Now you might be thinking to yourself, Sean, I don't have any good photos to add into my portfolio, and I

think this is a struggle that a lot of young photographers have when they're first starting out. But luckily, we can create an insane portfolio in a matter of weeks by utilizing spec shoots. Now, spec shoots are basically fake commercial shoots, so we grab a product that we like, that we want to shoot, we

grab some friends, we grab a model, and we go out and we act like we're shooting that product in a commercial environment. This is going to give you some really professional-looking images that you can put into your portfolio, and nobody needs to know that you didn't actually work

With that brand, I used this early on in my career, and it was massive for building a really strong portfolio to reach out to clients with. In my Finding Freedom program, I actually give students weekly mock briefs so they can go out and shoot images for their

portfolio as if they were working with an actual client. But you really need to love the process of shooting and editing photos, and that's the most important thing for building a good portfolio—to get out there, shoot, engage with your creativity, and become obsessed with

creating, because you will walk away with some really marketable photos that you can have in your portfolio. Now, once you have your portfolio in place, it's time to start outreaching to clients. And one of the biggest misconceptions that I see a lot of photographers making is

thinking they need to have a big social media following in order to score clients in this industry, but this couldn't be further from the truth. Most industry photographers don't actually have a large social media following; you only see the ones on social media that have big followings because they're the

loudest. Clients are mainly going to come to you in two ways: through word of mouth and through outreach. Outreach is essentially cold emailing or DMing brands on Instagram, providing our services, showing our work, and offering value right off the bat. And the reason

why this works is incredibly simple: we're putting our work, our services, and the value that we can offer directly in front of a target customer. And when I was first starting out with photography, I used this to great effect while I was traveling in the US at the time.

Living in Thailand, I needed to go home to visit my family, but I needed to make some money while I was home. So I reached out to hundreds of different cafes in Portland, San Francisco, and New York, and I ended up scoring $55,000 in

jobs in about three weeks' time while I was traveling. I call this my mass outreach strategy, and I still use it today because it's so incredibly effective. I talk about this quite a bit in my workshop, so if you guys want to check

that out, once again, there's a link in the description. But I do want to mention a few outreach tips from when you're first starting out. Number one is focus on businesses that have a marketing budget to begin with, and often these are going to be product brands. One of the

biggest earners for us as photographers is commercial photography or shooting products for product brands. And there are a million different brands that we can find around the world on Instagram, and we can reach out to those brands, offer our services, show them our work, and score paid jobs with those

clients. But you want to make sure that you're reaching out to brands that are going to resonate with the photos in your portfolio. So if you have a bunch of photos of watches in your portfolio, reach out to watch brands, but maybe don't reach out to brands selling diapers

for babies. You want to make sure that the brand is going to resonate with the photos in your portfolio. The next tip is to make sure your email is good. And one of the biggest mistakes so many photographers make is they talk about themselves way too much in their

Outreach message, whether it's a DM or an email, you need to get to the point. Briefly introduce yourself and immediately jump into the value you can provide that specific brand. This is ultimately a sales email, and we really need to communicate as much value as

possible in that first message. Now, if you guys want to see the exact email and DM templates that I've used over the years to score clients, check out Perfect Pitches. There's a link in the description, and it has a bunch of email and DM templates as well as a detailed

pitching guide so you can go out, you can reach out to brands and know you're saying the right thing and start scoring jobs as soon as this weekend. Now, the last tip I have is if you're really just starting out, I do highly recommend

working for free. And the reason why this is so great for us early on is because it's an incredible way to build our portfolio, and it also gets our foot in the door with different brands. For example, I always wanted to work with DJI, but I couldn't quite get my foot in the

door, so I reached out to them and I offered to work for free on a project. I shot those images, I shot the video, I sent it to them, and they absolutely loved it. And then when their next campaign came around, I got paid to be

part of that campaign. So working for free is a really amazing tool for us early on to build connections, to build a portfolio, to gain experience, and I highly, highly recommend it early on. But keyword here: early on. You don't want to be doing this forever; we need to make a

Living, and this is only relevant when you're just starting out and you really want to build that portfolio. Now, next up, we want to develop a base rate for our photography, and I know a lot of photographers struggle with pricing because it's difficult. Pricing is never

fun, and it's always something that we're constantly working on throughout our careers. Now, a base rate is exactly what it sounds like; it's the minimum amount that you will accept for a shoot. Now, early on, this might be $250, this might be $300, $500, or even $2,000 or $5,000

once you get that far on in your career. And the reason why this is so important to us is because it allows us to immediately dismiss clients that are not within our budget, that are not within our time. It gives us a general understanding of what we should be

earning in jobs, and it also helps us quote for each individual job as they come. Now, when you do price your services, always price higher than your base rate so you can come back down if you need to, to meet the client's demands and also make them feel like they're getting a

deal. Now, in terms of your specific base rate, this is really going to depend on how far you are in your career. Back in the day, when I first started out, it was $250, but now I won't go out on a shoot for less than $2,000, and that's quite a

small shoot. So think about this a little bit and think about how much you want to be earning from your photography jobs and come up with a base rate for your services. Now, obviously, pricing is a big topic, and I can really go into this and talk about this for hours if you guys

Want me to make a more detailed video on pricing? Let me know in the comments below! That's something I'd be willing to make for you guys, to kind of expand on how to price your work and how to fit into any given market. Now, up to this

point, we've talked about building a portfolio, outreaching to clients, developing that base rate. Now, once we have all of these things in place, we need to make sure that we're delivering the client a smooth experience. And this really isn't that difficult. A lot of

photographers are not very good at communicating with their clients, at meeting their clients' needs. And the most important thing that you can do to make sure your client is having a good experience is to just communicate with them. Talk to them. Send more emails than

you think you need to. Make sure everything is laid out in detail for the shoot and make sure you fully understand what that client is looking for. This is going to lead to happy clients, regardless of the industry that you're in, which is going to, in turn, lead to

more clients coming through word of mouth. Essentially, we just want to make this experience as easy and as efficient for the client as possible. And every service industry goes the same: if you can take the weight off of your customer and you make it easy for them, they're

going to enjoy working with you. And another way to do that is by using client management software like Pixieset or ShootProof. And these are great because you can put together really beautiful galleries to deliver photos with. Clients can select proofs on these services. You can deliver the final

images there, and you can also sell prints directly from your store. So I highly recommend services like these if you're just starting out, but once again, it's not totally necessary. You don't need to go spend a bunch of money on a monthly subscription if you're not

bringing in clients yet. Just focus on scoring your first few clients, communicating with those clients, and you can get a service like this later on. Now, the last step in building a photography business, and I think this is incredibly important for any business, is to stay

curious, keep learning about how you can provide better service to your clients, keep learning about how you can capture better photos. Speak with other photographers, look at what other photographers are doing. I think it's important to really stay present in this industry; you cannot go this alone, so

connect with other photographers, offer to ask them questions, and be curious about how they're running their photography businesses. It's amazing how much one small tip can completely revolutionize your business, and this was really important for me early on because I learned a lot from all the different

photographers that I was hanging out with, that I was shooting with, and I was able to ask them questions about how to run a photography business and pick up little tidbits here and there, and that massively helped my business in the long run. Now, starting a photography business

can be a bit of a grind early on, but my fondest memories of being a professional photographer were when I was first starting out in this industry. I was completely broke; I was living in Northern Thailand; I had just quit my full-time job, and I was living paycheck

to paycheck, trying to make something work, being curious and learning as much as I possibly could. While it was stressful, it was honestly so much fun, and I envy you guys for being in this first step of starting a photography business because, in my opinion,

it's the most fun. But those are all the steps that I think you need to take to start a photography business. And I want to come back to that idea one more time: you don't need to have all of these different things in place in order to

start getting paid. If you have a decent camera, you have a few images that you can throw into a portfolio, and you have an email address, that's all you really need to get started in this industry, and you're going to be able to build your business as you go. So just focus on

getting started, focus on scoring that first client so you can legitimize yourself as a professional photographer, and then you can continue building your business as you go. But I really hope you guys found this video useful. I really enjoy these simple chats, but I actually

have a flight in about 3 hours, flying back to the States, so I've got to get going; I've got to pack my stuff. But thank you guys so much for watching, and once again, if you want to check out my free workshop, there's a link in the

description, and that dives into some of the topics that we discussed here today a little bit more, and we'll give you a really clear framework on how to start a photography business in 2024. But thank you guys so much for watching. I will chat with you again soon, and I hope you

The FASTEST way to start a freelance photography business in 2024

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