Photographers who do not closely examine the surroundings within the frame of their image are those who come away with images that have great distractions

There is nothing more painful for a portraitist than taking a portrait that is beautifully posed, gorgeously lit, and absolutely unusable … simply because no attention was given to background composition!

Keep eyes in the upper third This is the most natural spacing for a portrait. Try not to divert from this rule unless you are deliberately creating tension. Another exception of this rule is when a subject is full-bodied in the bottom third of the frame.

2. Become a paparazzi! Snapped a celebrity doing a walkabout? Scoopt finds buyers for news pictures… and a model eating is always news.

5. Create a specialized photography book It’s nice to put your favorite images in a photography book; it’s nice money when you put your kid’s school soccer team in a book and sell it to their parents.

15. Decorate cafes Ask café owners to put your pictures on their walls. They get free art… you get to show pictures with price tags.

3. Make a nursery bloom Cafés and restaurants make good galleries because they have static viewers and plenty of walls. But you can also approach other businesses and shoot pictures that suit their topics. A nursery, for example, might be willing to host an exhibition that showed the sort of flowers they sell in the best possible light.

11. Join a campaign Just as you can find a website on every topic you can think of, so you can also find a pressure group on every topic you can think of. The Harrisburg Camera Club teamed up with the Capital Area Greenbelt Association in 2007 to show off the Greeenbelt’s appeals. Which local group could use your images — and bring you publicity and sales in return?

19. Outsource all the marketing Jeremy Mason McGraw turned out to be pretty smart when it came to creating joint ventures. In fact, his career as a travel photographer really took off when he partnered with a marketing expert who sold his services while he did the supplying. Find someone who sells and you could do the same.