Modelling in Nigeria:To join or NOT to join an agency.

 Now that you’re done with all I asked you to do in last week’s post Modelling In Nigeria:how/where to start  , its time to go find an agency or maybe not if you’re considering being a  freelance model.

To join or Not to join an agency. That’s the issue today!!

The proper thing to do is to join an agency.Companies/brands are supposed to deal with the agents and not the models directly but in Nigeria, this is
not the case most of the time. I guess its because some of these brands or companies know that there are many freelance models and its cheaper to work with models directly.

Asides the fact that the business of dealing with models directly is still very common in the fashion industry here, bad experiences with horrible agents have pushed some models to hop on the freelance bus. Also,there are very few good agencies and many models.Hence,  there are cases of forgotten models in agencies and they hardly get jobs.

Freelance Route:- Advantages include freedom of not being signed under anyone, being able to attend as many castings as they come, take up as many jobs as you want , probably get more jobs, have all the pay for yourself and answer to no one.

Disadvantages include having no one to manage you and make sure you are treated properly by whoever is hiring, having no one to properly negotiate a good price that will benefit you and the agency, not getting good/reputable modelling jobs and  since you have no agent to fight for you, there is a high chance that you’ll do a job and not get paid. YUP! IT HAPPENS.

Sign Up With An Agency Route:- Advantages include all the things that the model who chooses the freelance route does not get to enjoy.

Disadvantages include having to be stuck in an agency that does not know you exist or joining a horrible agency and because you’ve signed a contract, you have to be with the agency till your contract expires unless the contract allows you to leave anytime you want( i am not sure there are many contracts like this).

If you choose to join the freelance bus, then you need to have friends in the fashion industry that will send you information about jobs and castings(sort of like auditions) for modelling jobs . Since you are your own agent, you also need to be smart enough to make sure you are not cheated. Negotiate properly and make sure you get paid after your job. Its not an easy route but its possible for you to do well in it.

If you choose to go the other way, then join a good agency.You also need to be sure that the agent genuinely likes you and that he/she is interested in managing you well. The jobs might not come as often as if you’re in the freelance route but they’ll be good jobs and your agency will take care of getting your pay.

So think about these routes carefully and make up your mind on which one will be good for you. Hopefully, some day there’ll be many good agencies, many good modelling jobs and those in need of models will learn to contact agents instead of models directly.

Next week, I shall talk about: what you need to have before you go agency hunting and I’ll recommend some top agencies in the country as I could not SQUEEZE it all in this post.

Have any questions within the context of this post or there is a part of it that’s not clear? ..feel free to drop it in the comment section and I promise to reply

see you next wednesday.

yours truly,

THE MODEL

The picture used in this post is from Damilola’s profile on styljunki 

view profiles of all the models on styljunki -> http://styljunki.com/member/models/