How to Boost Your Photography Sales and Get Published in Magazines

Are you just getting started with your photography business, or struggling to find clients? This 15-minute video from French photographer Serge Ramelli is well worth your time, as he imparts his knowledge and experience on making bookings and getting your work printed.

Sometimes it takes a bit of hustle to get your business up and running. In the video, Ramelli goes through techniques he himself has used to find new clients in the past. He tells the story of when he was getting his business started photographing hotels in Paris. He created a spreadsheet of numbers for every hotel in the city and cold called them every Tuesday and Thursday for 2 to 4 hours. This netted him around 8 clients every month.

Cold calling can be hard work, but once you’ve got those initial clients and expanded your portfolio, you may never have to do it again. A similar ‘brute force’ method can be applied to getting your work printed. Ramelli talks about the time he mailed 5 photography magazines in France with a series of printed photographs, a cover letter, a CD with high-res copies, and an authorization to publish.

“Out of the 5 magazines 3 published me,” he says. “One did an 8-10 page article on me. This original press is what got me my first O-1 Visa to be a photographer in the United States.”

The table of contents for the video is below:

1:09 Easy starting points for photography
2:53 Cold calling technique
6:15 Door 2 Door technique
8:02 Get the ball rolling
8:59 Real estate
10:26 The Magazine Technique

You can also find more of Ramelli’s popular photography videos through his YouTube channel.