I'm losing my job in about a month and plan on pursuing the business of photography. It has been a hobby of mine and I need work to support my family. Assuming I have skills, portfolio, etc, is work easy to come by? Will I get steady work if I posted an ad on say Craigslist? I will be living near a rural city(if that makes sense). As the title shows, I'm interested in mainly portrait photography but will "dabble" in others.

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It's a competitive field. You will not get steady work from portraiture and Craigslist is not a guarantee you get people calling you up. Not everyone gets a portrait everyday. Think about wedding photography too. It's best to look for another job while at the same build your reputation as a photographer.

How easy or hard is it to make money from portrait photography? . If you are good - easy.. . If you are bad - hard.. . I doubt you will get squat off Craigslist. However, it's free so go for it. Here in the Tucson area it is full of nothing but BS Artist, scammers, dead beats and the like. My postings get flagged all the time and I post in family and related areas where one is "allowed" too. . Have something new. Refreshing. Different. If your offering the same ol' bag of salted peanuts on the corner as the next guy on the other corner you had better have something else to draw the people.

depends how good you are with your camera... if you can't take decent photos, you are going to make nothing... there will be lots of other people out there wanting to do the same thing, and will undercut for a share of the market...

Don't forget to check out your competition. Depending on the size of the city you may find that there are already a lot of photographers with good reputations. You'll have to offer something they don't. Don't expect to make a lot the first few years.

It's a tough market. The perceived value of photographic services has dropped as every fool with a DSLR for more than a week thinks he/she can be a professional photographer. Greater supply berings prices down. also, many of these "new" photographers don;t understand the real cost of running a business so undercharge like crazy further reducing the perceived value of photographic services. Assuming you know what you are doing (both in terms of photography and running a business), you'll find you spend as much (if not more) time getting work as you do actually working on a shoot / post prod ... at lesat until your reputation increases. I haven't had mcuh success with craigslist ... it has to do with the demographic that uses craigslist to find photographers and the type of photographer that TYPICALY advertises there.

Perhaps these links will be helpful to you. My personal opinion is to try to find another way to make money. I have done it as a business for a while. I was beginning to hate even touching a camera. The stress levels, and the incessant marketing, and dealing with the common public mindset now that they should be able to get any kind of photography work done for next to nothing, just got to be too much. http://www.cjlewis.com/starting-a-photography-busines.html http://www.dannysteyn.com/how-to-become-a-professional-photographer.htm http://www.amazon.com/Fast-Track-Photographer-Revised-Expanded/dp/081740001X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1289856882&sr=1-1 http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1435454294/ref=ord_cart_shr?ie=UTF8&m=ATVPDKIKX0DER steve

The truth is the portrait industry is thriving and is one of the easiest ways to profit with photography. You don't even have to be good at photography (you can always hire a good photographer to shoot the sessions that you book ) but you do have to know how to market your services. The link that someone else posted to CJ Lewis is a good one. However don't purchase his $1600 course right away as his $39.95 per month inner circle membership is a far better value and his site offers a lot of valuable free content. However, as another person posted.... offering something unique and different, something that will make people take notice and say WOW when they see samples of your work will make your job much easier. It is pretty simple to go from zero to $500+ daily if you market the right way. You can market for an entire year for less than $500 and get clients fast. But it won't happen by doing what most of the photography marketing gurus teach. CJ Lewis will tell you the secret is to set up portrait displays in restaurants all over your town with lift cards (lift cards are postcard size business cards / sales pieces) that people can lift from your display, take home with them and hopefully they will call you for more information. Although that advice will work given enough time there are far more cost effective, fast and simpler ways to flood yourself with portrait clients but most photographers are starving artists who will not be able to help you because they don't know how simple it really is to get clients. That means you have a golden opportunity to succeed because most of your competition will be wasting their time on expensive, ineffective advertising. They are under the illusion that the best photographers will succeed when the truth is.... its the best marketers of photography services that will always kick their butts when it comes to sales averages and numbers of clients. If you want to learn how to easily WOW your portrait clients giving them something that they already want then consider doing fantasy portraits of children and adults. Visit http://www.DigitalFantasyBackgrounds.com and join their free digital background of the month club. Their Free monthly newsletter will teach you how to market portraits without paying a guru $1000 or more to tell you how. They have a sister site at: www.MomsWithCamera.com that markets a complete start up package including Digital SLR Camera, Light, Reflectors, and Props for $5000 for those who want to offer Anne Geddes style children portraits. And there are several inexpensive ebooks that are also very good. (See the reference sites below) and one really good free one at: http://www.PetPhotographyBusiness.com Don't ask starving photographers and artists for advice. Seek out the highly successful ones and ask them how to do it. Steve P in his post above said "The stress levels, and the incessant marketing, and dealing with the common public mindset now that they should be able to get any kind of photography work done for next to nothing, just got to be too much". - That is true for many photographers who operate a traditional studio. I would advise new photographers to not open a studio. Its very hard to succeed today with a traditional studio and traditional marketing. Visit the links Steve gave above, especially the CJ Lewis link. But then go study the free content from www.DigitalFantasyBackgrounds.com and take advantage of the low cost guerrilla marketing tactics that they teach in their free newsletter. Read the free ebook at the PetPhotographyBusiness.com site to learn why a traditional Studio is not the best way to run your business and also take their free 6 part ecourse. It's amazing how much great advice successful photographers like all of the above mentioned ones give away for free. And people will spend a lot on their portraits once you know how to sow them the final results and how you design your packages. The 3 most important things I learned from CJ Lewis is to use a digital projector to show your images and always lead with your Whopper package that is priced so high that no one in their right mind would purchase it but it makes all of your other packages look really attractive. And never, ever put prices on your website.