Self-Promotion…

Be a Specialist…

in Your Chosen Subject

John Longford is a freelance travel writer and has produced a course on how to break into the profession: www.FreelanceTravelWriter.com, info@freelancetravelwriter.com

Advance Note: While this article addresses travel writing and photography, the principal outlines can apply to any business.

By focusing your writing and photography (or both) on an area of particular expertise or interest to you, you as a freelancer can readily carve out a niche for yourself. This might be a subject such as scuba diving, fly-fishing, off-trail skiing, travel for teenagers or the over-50s, or a particular destination you are familiar with.

Don't think for one moment that you need to know everything there is to know about a subject before you can regard yourself as an expert. All you need is to know more about that subject than the average photographer or writer and the majority of your readers or clients.

And once you've published two or three photo stories or articles on a subject, two things will happen. Firstly, you will be regarded by others as something of an expert in that field, and secondly, you will have picked up a lot of detailed knowledge on the subject whilst researching those articles. In short..... You will be an expert!

Although one of the main benefits of being a freelancer is that you can work as a generalist and photograph or write about whatever you wish to, when you wish to, there are also benefits to focusing on certain subjects as your areas of expertise.

By focusing at least part of your work on a particular area or areas, you will command greater credibility when you approach editors with proposals. And once you've built up a reputation for yourself in a particular area, you might even find editors approaching you with assignments and commissions.

Another benefit of specializing is that once you've built up a degree of background knowledge on a particular subject, future photo coverage and/or articles will require less research as you'll already have many of the approaches and facts at your fingertips. You'll also have in your possession many fine details about your subject which are not widely known, even amongst photographers and writers, which you can use to greatly enrich your work.

Take a moment now to think about what subjects you might wish to be able to focus on. What locations have you particularly enjoyed visiting on vacation or business? What types of locations, for example islands, rainforests or hideaways, have you enjoyed visiting?

What travel activities do you most enjoy? Trekking in remote mountain ranges in the high Himalayas or Andes? Heli-skiing in unspoiled snow fields miles from the nearest settlement? Exploring virgin rainforests by dugout canoe?

Sharing the lifestyles of indigenous populations in their homes? Or maybe hunting out delightful presents in the Christmas markets of Germany and Austria?

These are only a few examples of the potential subjects you could focus on.