Tips for budding photographers

This is coming up more and more these days. Folks are paying good money to go to school for photography. First off, understand this, it's a tough job and 90 percent of all photographers are part time. Secondly, it's a given that all photographers are generalists but you gotta have a specialty in order to survive. To thrive, you have to be equally as good at marketing yourself as you are at photography. Most of the time, photography and marketing ability don't mix. Many photographers were photo geeks before the term geek existed. Techie photographers are usually overly anal geeks who would rather be the lone wolf and not have to deal with people. Then you have the artsy fartsy photographers who are in it "for art" reasons but live in la la land when it comes to figuring out how to make money at what they do. The you have dime a dozen portrait photographers who contribute heavily to the glut and over supply by all chasing after the same dime eveyone else is. Then you have the sports and event guys who think they will be discovered by Sports Illustrated so they are willing to work for free. Here's the real poop, 1- you better be very good at what you specialize in. Competition is too hard to be just okay. 2- You don't need the latest and greatest camera. But you do need to use pro equipment. Show up at anything with a Canon Rebel in your hands and you won't be considered professional. Rent or buy used equipment if you have to. 3-If you are going to shell out the big bucks for anything, make it a wonderful lens. They are expensive but worth every penny. 4-90 percent of all photographers are self taught. You don't need to go to school for photography, time spent in class could have been used out shooting which is really what you should be doing over and over again. 5-You need to do what a typical mom and dad can't do with their cheapo Rebel camera 6-If you do take classes, learn the old fashioned way by using film with an all manual camera. You still need to learn the technical aspects before you use the automatic functions.
7- Use the Web to promote yourself but do not try to sell photos online. IT DOES NOT WORK!