Many creative professionals have a "non-commercial" side to their work. Sometimes it is a beautiful abstract style of shooting. Sometimes it is the subject of the illustration or painting. Creative people often call this their personal work but don't know how to market the images. Strong personal style tends to be purchased by high-end advertising clients or by industries such as fashion, editorial, stock or paper products. The marketing results can be unpredictable because the work is based on the way you see the world and your personal creativity. It takes a very special client to go with your personal style instead of taking a safe, traditional route! You may already been frustrated trying to get your personal style used by your commercial clients. In some of the major city markets, style is the best seller for most creative professionals. If you are not in a major city or dealing with style clients every day, your personal work may not be needed in many commercial projects. It is your job to find the right clients for this work!

Why is it so different to get these assignments? First, the clients are not your typical bread & butter clients. They are risk-takers. They are driven by their own sense of style and vision. Second, they are not easy to find because they are not listed as a category in any reference books! This makes traditional selling difficult since you can't easily identify the clients to call. You will do more response promotions such as sourcebook ads to let the clients that can use your style call you. Third, the image selection for designing any promotions for "style clients" is very different. You must select work that only shows your personal style. Yes, it may cause a more conservative client to turn away but your objective is to get the client that understands style to call you. Fourth, style often creates a broad and shallow client base. It is broad in the geographic sense. Clients that are willing and able to work with a strong style are scattered across the world! They are everywhere, no one city having all of these clients. However, it is shallow because these clients are a constantly changing and shifting pool. They change creative professionals quite frequently to use lots of different styles.

Here are some ideas for finding clients to create work for love and money:

• Broadcast your style with sourcebook ads supported by a strong portfolio of the same style
• Mount an exhibit of your personal work with a local fine artist in your own studio and invite clients and the media
• Combine a direct mail campaign that refers to a sourcebook ad for the name recognition
• Enter every creative and self-promotion awards program and get your work published - everywhere and anywhere!
• Find a community service or pro bono project that will allow you complete creative freedom and make sure to get enough printed samples to use as promos
• Display personal work in your studio so your commercial clients can become used to thinking "outside the box"
• A single self-promotion won't work well alone to sell personal style, write a plan to have all your different marketing techniques pulling together
• Pursue editorial projects. Cutting edge clients that buy style read all types of art magazines
• Put a page on a Web site that is widely promoted and then send postcards to clients to come visit your on-line "exhibit"
• Paint, draw, shoot, play every single day -- do it for yourself!