emodel.com, Options Talent Group

Dear Modeling Scams,

First off, I'd like to thank you for the site. It's very informative, and a great service to protect people from being hurt in one of the most dispicable ways.

I worked as a scout for eModel last year, and what I saw there made me nauseous. 

You've heard the typical scout experience in several other letters, so I won't waste your time describing it again.

Suffice it to say that I worked my butt off, actually spent money, believing that it would be made up for by a paycheck, but I never saw a dime.

I did pick up some interesting information, however. Did you know that Talent Executives have to maintain a 50% enrollment rate to keep their jobs?

After an open call, I heard a corporate trainer and the franchise manager talking, and I distinctly heard one of them say that girls from a particularly well-off part of town were great prospects, because they were gullible, vain, and they had the money to feed their egos.

I had a sneaking suspicion that something was wrong from the beginning. The Corporate Trainer tried to weasel out of the questions that I asked him about the service.

I've been modeling since I was three years old, and so I was interested in joining the site.

Unfortunately, no one could tell me what kind of jobs were being offered to eModel members, or whether anyone had been picked up by big agencies.

They said that the only contact that they knew about was the initial contact, and everything else was conducted by phone, so they had no way to track it.

If this is true, how do they know about callback statistics?

It is honestly not hard to find work as a model if you have drive, determination, and a desire to succeed.

Comp cards don't even have to be expensive, as there are photographers out there who are more than happy to do TFP (Time for Prints) work.

OneModelPlace.com is a free listing service for models and photographers, and I've set up several paid shoots through that site, and I did TFP work for my portfolio. (Yes, I only paid for printing for my portfolio and comp cards. It can be done).

At this point, I genuinely feel bad that I led 50 people to eModel, instead of pointing them to a reputable photographer instead.

Some of the people that I scouted had potential, and I'd hate to think that they've been disillusioned by this.

B.A.