If one of your aspirations is to progress as a photographer and make some or all of your income from photography, you’ll need a plan to make that happen.

We spoke to bunch of people who work in photography, they gave us 5 pieces of advice which we’ll share over the coming weeks. Here’s the first.

Develop a Style and Specialisation

You can’t please all of the people all of the time. To be successful you need to decide which area of photography you’re going to specialise in and then create an amazing portfolio around that.

Pick from many niche areas including wedding, food, product, portrait, fashion, stock, sport, wildlife or a multitude of others. Some go well together such as portrait and wedding, or food and product, but it will not help you at all if you have lots of sections in your portfolio showing some animals, a few shots from your amazing travels, several cute baby shots, your friend’s wedding and a handful or macro shots. You’ll need to be brutal and cull some of your favourite images so that your portfolio is clearly focused around the area of photography that your potential customers are looking to buy.

Furthermore, you need to develop a strong style. Lots of different styles will confuse potential clients because they won’t know what to expect from you. People should clearly be able to understand the type of images they will get if they work with you.

Accept that not everyone will like your style, but those that do will be very interested in working with you.  Maybe one day people may be able to look at an image recognise it as yours.

So, could your first photography task of 2014 be to decide on your specialisation, focus your portfolio, and then start to develop your style?