• Choose a path with a chance for a payoff.  Why struggle when you don’t have to? If you choose a niche market that motivates you, where you can honestly say you wouldn’t want to do anything esle, that is success. Hopefully it can happen like that, and people will pay for what you want to produce.
• Be better. Make it your mission to be the best at what you do. Continue to practice and improve. People pay for performance.
• Is your attitude worth catching? Marketability may not have anything to do with your talent level but more to do with people’s tolerance of you. There are some difficult people who other’s won’t work with for any amount of money.
• Be reliable. When a client works wit a tight budget they have to be practical and look who delivers.
• Produce and you will prosper.  You may work extremely hard on a project and it will still bomb. Believe me, I understand. But you have to keep plugging away and build a body of work and a track record. You have to get your work out there. Make sure you get proper credit and that people know what you are doing and the success you are having. The people who get promoted usually have a highter profile than those who don’t.  Participate in projects that make a difference, projects that leave a legacy and yes, projects that make you a star.
• Success by association. If you have worked on a hit, you can get some of that to rub off on you. Name drop. It builds you up.
• Big fish, small pond. Be the best in a small niche. What trends have you noticed that you can identify with, that interest you, and that involve some of your skills and abilities.
• Strike while the iron is hot. When you are new, there is a honeymoon period. You are all potential. Milk it for all it’s worth. You need three big things back to back to really build up your fee rate.
• Go where the money is.  Is there a demand for what you are thinking of doing? Will people pay?
• Go where the money WILL be. No matter where you are working on, you have to start thinking about the next big thing down the line.

ACTION TIME

Make a stack of cards of your talents and skills, abilities, experience, gifts and strengths. Pull out the cards that will make you more marketable. Make a top ten stack. Do the same for any projects you are working on, or thinking of working on. Which are the most marketable?