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Genuine modelling agencies

There is an organisation called the Association of Model Agencies (AMA). Their members are governed by rules of conduct that should ensure that you are treated fairly, and in accordance with the DTI (Department of Trade & Industry) guidelines for best practice in the modelling industry.

If you can get onto the books of one of their members then you have a very good chance of success!

Unfortunately, it isn't easy to register with members of this organisation. The reason for this is that everyone else wants to be on their books too, they get many thousands of applications and they accept very few of them. They may also have criteria that you simply don't match, for example height, weight, size and age.

If you want to try your luck with A.M.A. members, all you need to do is to send them a snapshot of your face (don't bother with a professional photo) and your personal details. If they are interested they will contact you and ask you to attend an interview. If they accept you they may offer you a contract. They will then arrange for you to be photographed by their photographer (or by a photographer they deal with) and they will either pay for the photography or they will pay for it initially and then deduct the cost from your earnings (find out which and if you are going to end up paying for it, find out how much it is going to cost you) They will then send you on 'look-sees' - auditions for modelling work. They will also provide you with all the training you need.

None of this will have cost you a penny upfront, like all reputable agencies they make all their money by deducting their commission from your modelling earnings.

Try it. Ring them up. All of them! And keep ringing them until one of them accepts you or it becomes obvious that none of them are interested in you.

The next stage is to approach agencies who are not A.M.A. members but who might be perfectly respectable too. These agencies don't generally get the really exotic work and so they don't get the high-flying supermodels either, but they operate in a very similar way to A.M.A. members and you should be safe with them. There are hundreds of these agencies.

The smaller genuine agencies will probably do less to promote you than the industry leaders, and although they won't ask you to pay them any fees they may ask you to provide them with two essentials, photographs and model cards. They may only ask you for model cards but that's much the same thing because you'll need the photos for the model cards.

Model cards are a simple double-side printed card, around A5 size, with 4 of 5 photos of you, your vital statistics and your contact details. The agency will be able to give you the names of printers who can produce them for you and they will probably cost you around £100 for the first 1,000.

Why do you have to pay for the model cards and photos? Well, there are 2 reasons for this. Firstly, a small agency won't be making as much commission from you as a larger agency would and really can't afford to subsidise you and secondly, there are an awful lot of timewasters around. A good way of weeding out timewasters is by making them put their hands in their pockets to prove that they are serious about modelling. At the same time, although they are making you spend your money, none of it is going into their own pockets so you know that they are a genuine agency and not a scam merchant. If, however, the agency suggests that you should use their own photographer you should walk away, it is probably a scam.

Although most of the smaller model agencies will insist that you provide model cards, I do know of one small agency that asks for them but doesn't actually insist - but any models who do not supply cards simply will not get any work (except, if they're very lucky, short-notice emergency cover) and the reason for this is that if there are no photographs the clients will simply not know that the model even exists.

Things are different with the top model agencies, where model cards are less important because models are sent on 'look-sees' or castings, where the clients (or their advertising agencies or photographers) will actually meet them.

So far so good, but these smaller agencies aren't easy to get into either and you will probably have to contact a lot of them before anyone accepts you.
Some of them are specialists - they only accept people of a certain height, weight, size or age, or only accept children, or only accept people who live in certain areas. If you don't meet their criteria just cross them off your list, but if you do meet their criteria don't take no for an answer, "No" today may turn into "Yes" next week, and anyway some of them may tell you that they're not interested at first just to get rid of timewasters.