The 50-Day Marketing Challenge That Will Change Your Photography Business
Every photographer I know goes through the same cycle.
You get busy. Work comes in. You stop marketing because you don't have time.
Then the work dries up. And you panic.
I've done this more times than I want to admit. The fix is always the same: stop waiting for work to find you and start putting yourself back in front of people every single day.
I call it the 50-Day Marketing Challenge. And it has pulled me out of every slow period I've ever hit.
Before I get into it — I put the full breakdown of how I market my photography business inside a $10 ebook called The Adventure Photographer's Playbook. If you want the whole system, check it out here.
Why 50 days?
30 days is too short. You won't see results in 30 days because the sales cycle in this industry is long. I've connected with a brand in January and not made money with them until April. That's normal.
90 days is the real cycle for pitching and landing work. But 50 is the entry point — long enough to build momentum, short enough to commit to without burning out.
What the challenge actually looks like:
Every day for 50 days you do all of the following:
Send at least one pitch. Email, Instagram DM, LinkedIn message, cold call if you can find a number. It doesn't matter. Send something to someone who could hire you.
Post something. A photo, a behind the scenes, a story, a lesson. Show up somewhere publicly.
Follow up on something. An old lead, a past client, someone who went quiet. One touch per day.
That's it. It sounds simple because it is. The hard part is doing it every single day when you're tired, busy, or convinced it isn't working.
The most important thing I learned:
The work rarely comes from where you expect.
You'll pitch 50 brands and hear nothing. Then someone you emailed three months ago will reply out of nowhere. Or a brand will find you through a post you forgot you made. Or a past client will refer you to someone you've never heard of.
You don't know where the yes is coming from. You just have to be in enough conversations for it to find you.
That's the whole game.
How to start:
Make a list of 50 brands you want to work with. Not dream brands — realistic ones. Brands whose aesthetic matches your work and who are actively creating content.
Day one: pitch five of them.
Then pitch, post, and follow up every day for the next 49.
Track everything. Who you contacted, when, what you sent, what they said. Most will say nothing. Some will say no. A few will say yes.
And some of those yeses will come from places you never saw coming.
One last thing:
I still do this today. Every time I can see a slow period coming — when I know I've been heads down on a project and let my marketing slide — I start the clock again.
50 days. Every day. All of the above.
It has never not worked.
Reflection Questions
When did you last actively market yourself every single day for more than two weeks? What happened when you stopped?
Write down 10 brands right now that you could pitch this week. Not someday — this week. What's stopping you from sending those pitches today?
What does your follow-up system look like? Do you have one, or do you rely on memory?
If you committed to 50 days of daily marketing starting tomorrow, what would success look like at the end of it?
This lesson comes from my ebook "The Adventure Photographer's Playbook" and it costs $10. Why so cheap? The goal is to help as many new to mid level photographers as possible go from nothing to getting booked in 18 months:
The Adventure Photographer’s Playbook is an e-book created by full-time photographer Dalton Johnson to help new photographers go from nothing to booked in the adventure photography space.
This adventure photography e-book goes over the business and what “making it” as a photographer in the outdoor space requires. Covering topics such as pricing, marketing, building a body of work, reflection questions, and everything you need to know to make a career out of adventure photography.
Updated: June 2025
