I’m involved in all sorts of side gigs, from walking dogs, to crochet commissions. In my opinion, you can never truly be making too much money, and side jobs are a great way to grow your savings or add a boost to your family income. Keep reading for some helpful tips on getting side gigs when no one is banging down your door for work.

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Realize your weaknesses (and your strengths!)

One of the things I’m working on in my own life, is how introverted and bad with people I really am, despite all that I do. Okay, I’m not actually bad with people, I just have a hard time initiating conversation! However it is important to me to be able to walk up to someone and sell a product or service without having a gazillion butterflies making me want to throw up.

Recently I’ve been really into photography, particularly car photography. My husband is really into cars, so it just kind of happened. He needed pictures of his cars, and I just so happened to have a camera that I use for crochet photography for my Etsy shop.

Now, I don’t consider myself a photographer at all. I’ve had no training (except for one semester of digital photography in 10^th grade), and never tried to sell my pictures. However, the entrepreneur in me decided that I absolutely should be monetizing off of my photography “skills”, even if they aren’t the absolute best out there.So I decided, the first step is to create a portfolio to showcase my work.

Get on social media, showcase your work, and find what’s missing

I started an instagram account, and posted the pictures of the cars I shot. After about two weeks, I decided that I needed to add to the cars, and incorporate something else that would attract people to my skills. What goes better with cars than girls, right?

After a few nights of wondering how on earth I was going to find beautiful girls to photograph, I realized that there is a gentleman’s club right down the road from my house! That’s all fine and dandy, but I can’t just waltz right up into the club, camera in hand, and start taking pictures of the dancers. No, that wasn’t going to fly. I needed to contact the owner.

Combat your inner doubt (but be realistic)

The introvert in me said “No! Don’t do it! You will get rejected and immediately be depressed and curl up in the fetal position for two weeks straight! Danger!”. However, the entrepreneur in me took over, and decided that I need to do this in order to grow a portfolio so I can eventually start earning money off of my camera. (I use a Canon Rebel T6i)

I decided that I can’t make money right away since I’ve never actually taken pictures of women before, I just needed to take some pictures to showcase in my portfolio. That being said, I decided to contact the club owner, and explain that I wanted to build up my portfolio and was willing to take some shots of their girls, edit them up real nice, and give them to them to use in their social media, all for free. This is a win win for both of us; they get free quality shots of their girls, and I get to start my profile.

Take a breath, and make the contact

So, I found the club’s Facebook page, wrote a convincing message, took a deep breath, and hit send. I’m not going to lie; I was sick for hours while waiting for their response. I knew for a fact that I was going to be reject. But, to my surprise, a few hours later I got a message from the owner, and she was thrilled! (I later found out that they were sued a while back for using pictures of women without their permission in their advertisements). So it seemed to me that they really could use my services!

I wound up going to the club a week later, however none of the girls knew I was coming, so again I had to use my wonderful sales tactics to get some of them to agree to letting me take their pictures half naked on a pole. I managed to get the approval of 3 beautiful ladies.

The shoots went well. I got a few good shots of each of them, then decided to leave once the club started getting really full. (A girl’s gotta make money, right?) I left the place, and immediately started editing the photos once I got home.

The finished products are actually not bad for a first time! I was honestly surprised. I thought for sure the lighting was going to give me a problem, but it really wasn’t that bad at all.

That’s really all there is to it, people. If the gigs that you need aren’t coming to you, sometimes you just have to go out and find them yourself. Expand your horizon, and tell a company that they NEED your services or products. Take a deep breath and hit send. You may get rejected once, but eventually someone’s gotta say yes. You can do this. Tighten your bra and jump in head first. Be a Christian in a strip club in the name of the all-might tip dollar.