The prerequisites for survival as a location scout are of course different in different parts of the world. Here are some tips and reflections from a European perspective.

Common to all scouts is that the digital times have brought a whole new way of scouting locations. Of course, some things I raise here are obvious to the younger generation because they never experienced the analog era.

Today, we can divide locations into two categories: PRIVATE & PUBLIC LOCATIONS.

Private locations

Private locations creates a reasonable possibility of gaining control of your locations. By building your private network of good locations, you can create a base of locations that will make you money for a long period of time. In order to succeed, you should consider following:

- Create a personal relationship with the owner of the private location. Send congratulations on birthdays. Take time and call regularly to your favorites.

- Create a private Facebook group och email thread with your priority members (location owners) where you exclusively inform them about what you up to and when you renting out locations. If you succeed in creating this socially strong ribbons, you can be sure that you will succeed.  

Among private locations, you can divide the owners into two categories.

- Owners who rent out their property because they want to make money.

- Owners who enjoys renting out their private home for fun and at some time want to make money.

- Owners who only enjoys to lend out their house, free of charge, are vanishingly small and could be a potentially unreliable group.

Common for all location owners is that their main objective is to make money and therefore we would recommend you as a location scout to open for the money discussion as soon as possible. It is of high importance to create a realistic target that you and the owner can operate from. If your budget is low, mention it early in the process of location scouting. Also, do not forget to keep notes of what you have agreed on with each location owner. Preferably a professional contract is to recommend. One of the main benefits of a contract is the option to add a confidentiality agreement, which means that none of the parties are allowed to discuss your agreement with external people. Location owners who want to earn money are generally better to deal with because the bottom line is an economic deal.  

A successful bond to a location owner is when the ribbon is so strong that no one else will be able to rent without your knowledge. That the location owner, for example, may refer to you when it comes to renting out his house to other scouts. At this stage, it's not uncommon to have your own key or at least have the possibility to show the property when the owner is not at home.

For those locations that are not rented out so often, there is no need to put down too much work, but it is important to make a good judgment. Some of the best locations with many recurring rentals are extremely mediocre objects, but which have other advantages from a production point of view.

Public locations

Google has made places like squares, streets, shops, libraries and more so easy to track down, our recommendation is to be generous with such locations. Public places will probably always be the backbone of your location archive, but perhaps the least income-generating part. If you continuously document public locations and make them searchable in a smart way, your customers will see that you are on top. It is important to make yourself a name to be the location scout that offers locations with high availability.

The Future

Location scouts have been reputed to be a remarkable character that drives around in a SUV with a disproportionately large and expensive camera. Sometimes rumors argued that the location scout was sleeping in his car and that all meals were usually taken in the car. Today location scouting demands great social skills and the ability to network is absolutely crucial, to be successful in the business.

As you probably noticed, the number of paid scouting recording or broadcast locations has decreased. More and more of your scouting are expected to occur in your location archive, while customers complain that you do not present any new locations. The inefficient circle can only be broken by refusing to sit at home and wait for the job. Between each paid assignment you will need to find new locations. consider it as saving at the bank. The interest rate is broadly equal to zero. But as you know, things starts to happen with your capital after a while. Interest rates generate more results, but above all, it will soon be known that your income will increase rapidly over time.

Locamundo presents all location scouts sorted in the order of the number of locations they have in the Locamundo register. Which means that many locations will give you a top ranking in Locamundo.