The first decision is not photographs and it is not an agency. It is category. Commercial, fitness, hostess, promotional and parts work book people every week who fashion will never call, and they pay from the first job. Choosing the category that actually fits you is the difference between a realistic first ninety days and a year of silence.
Weeks one and two: pick the category honestly
Read what each category is booked for and what its portfolio needs, and be unsentimental. High fashion has narrow physical requirements and a tiny number of jobs. Commercial wants people who look like customers. Fitness wants current condition and a willingness to shoot it. Parts work is booked on one feature. Hostess and promotional work is booked on presentation, reliability and availability on a date. The category pages lay this out one by one, including what a brand is actually buying. If you are size 12 or above, the same decision runs differently and plus size and curve work covers which categories still book on height and which never did.
Weeks three and four: get usable images without spending money
Take digitals: front, profile and full length, minimal makeup, plain background, window light, no retouching. A phone is fine. Then arrange one or two collaborative tests with photographers building their own portfolios, where nobody invoices anybody and both sides get images they can use. Agree in advance, in writing, what each of you may publish.
Do not pay a stranger who approached you first. Every version of the modelling scam starts with enthusiasm and ends with an invoice for a portfolio shoot, a course, a registration or a website. Money flows towards the talent. The four scams that cost models the most describes each one and its tell.
Month two: publish, with the data attached
Put the images somewhere a buyer can find them, alongside the fields that decide a booking: category, city, height, age, a day-rate range you are willing to be contacted at, and your availability. A portfolio without those forces every interested buyer to email you before they know whether the booking is even possible, and most will not. How to structure a portfolio brands can search covers the fields, and you can preview your own card there before creating anything.
What to put in the rate field when you have no idea
Pick a range rather than a number, research it in your own city and category rather than industry-wide, and treat it as a starting position rather than a promise. The four variables that move a rate explains what you are actually pricing, which is time plus a usage licence, not just time.
Month three: be contactable, be reliable, be current
- Answer within a day. A slow reply loses more early bookings than a weak portfolio.
- Keep availability honest. Being marked available when you are not is how a directory stops being trusted, and it is one click to change.
- Ask every enquiry the same four questions: who is the client, what are the hours and location, what is the usage, and what is the payment term. A professional answers all four without blinking.
- Keep every release you sign. What a release covers matters more than it sounds like it should.
What a legitimate route never has
- A fee to be represented, listed, scouted or considered.
- A compulsory photographer, a compulsory course, or a compulsory "website package".
- A casting with no crew, no call sheet and a private address.
- Payment arriving before any work, with a request to forward part of it onwards.
What you should expect
Slowly, then in clusters. The first paid job is usually commercial, promotional or hostess work rather than anything glamorous, and it usually comes from being findable rather than from applying. That is the whole argument for a directory: you publish once, the criteria are searchable, and the person with the brief comes to you. Maxgirls charges a flat subscription for the listing, never a commission, and reviews every profile before it goes public. What that includes is on one page, with the price on another, and neither of them will ever tell you what you are going to earn.
Where this applies on Maxgirls
Your day-rate range, your categories, your city and your availability sit on your own profile, visible to a brand before they contact you, and Maxgirls takes no share of anything you book.