Idea: Children's birthday parties

Offer your services as a children's birthday party photographer.

The idea here is to promote your services at the places where parents go. You could put up a poster or drop off some flyers at indoor play centres, kindergartens, or junior schools close to your home. Some supermarkets have community notice boards where you could put up a free advertisement.

You could also advertise in magazines or newsletters that have parents/mothers as readers. Try including a special offer.

Idea: Work out of normal business hours

The idea here is to work when normal staff photographers can't.

For example, approach business-to-business/trade magazines about covering trade show events, conferences, or other out-of-hours events like social gatherings. (These types of magazines will often include a photo section featuring industry people at social events or conferences.)

It is also an idea to offer to attend relevant events that are far away from the magazine's corporate base. If the magazine has no one attending the event you can also offer to collect relevant press releases, business cards etc. that the magazine can use to generate articles.