How to find paying clients as a photographer

I purposely wrote how to find clients as opposed to how to get clients. A lot of us photographer have that dreamy mindset of posting our work on social media and some day a big brand is going to dm us, we’ll get the deal of our life and our career suddenly takes off.

I’m here to tell you today that this is not how it works.

First, let’s talk about commercial clients/brands. Of course it’s great to have a good looking Instagram page and a professional website, but what all of that worth if nobody finds it? Nothing, right.

What you need to do in order to find paying clients is to reach out to them. Find a ton of brands who’s products and philosophy you like and email them. Tell them what you like about their brand and what you can offer to them.

Let’s say you write 10 emails to different brands. Chances are you’re probably only going to get a positive reply from one or two of them - and they might not even turn into actual shoots. Don’t let that demotivate you though, the other brands might have someone they work with frequently or they’re just not looking for you style of photography – and that doesn’t mean that what you’re doing is bad, it’s just not suitable for that brand.

So in order to have a commercial shoot every month, you need to reach out to 120 brands a year. But you’re not going to be able to live off of what you make from 12 commercial shoots. So let’s say our commercial shoot brings us €1000. In order to keep your current lifestyle you need €1500 per month, which means you need to earn a minimum of €3000 per month. From those €3000 you’ll have to pay taxes, studio rent, pay off your equipment, pay for Photoshop, your website and so on you know what this leads to.

So to earn €3000 per month (and then have €1500 a month) you need to do 3 commercial projects every month. Which means you need to reach out to 30-40 brands a month. This might seem intimidating, but think about how many brands there are on Instagram alone that could need a little update to their feed, who just launched new products and need photos of those and so on.

So start writing a list of possible brands today and start emailing them. Because unless you’re already super established in the industry and have worked with really big clients before – the clients don’t find you, you need to go and find them.

Part two, private clients. This can be models looking to build their portfolio, couples, families and so on. These people will likely find you through Social Media or through word of mouth. Therefore it’s important to be active and to establish a good realitionship with your followers. This way they will feel more connected to you and more willing to have a paid shoot.

Some people might not know that you actually offer paid shoots. So what I would suggest is to post you available dates in your story, telling your followers they can message you if they want more info on your rates. This tells them you’re available, it tells them that it’s a paid thing and it tells them how they can get it.

Another way to make your followers aware of your paid shoots is to post acutal client photos with a caption that states that the person paid you for the photo. For example “I’m so blessed with the pretties clients” or “Had so much fun shooting with my client Anna the other day”. This again shows people that they can book you and that you’re available. A lot of photographers tend to just post their tfp projects because these shoots often are more creative, but if you want to book paid shoots you need to let people know you do that, otherwise they won’t ever know.

I hope this was helpful, if you have any questions you can message me on Instagram any time and I’ll be happy to help you! Below you can watch a short Behind The Scenes video of my last branding shoot with Lune Studios!