All the facts you need to decide whether you and your child should pursue this potentially lucrative and satisfying career.

Editor's Note: We're asked questions again and again by parents who want to know how to make their children into professional models. They want to know how to get started, how much it pays, and if they need to spend hundreds (or thousands) of dollars on fancy portfolios.

Here are all the facts you need to decide whether you and your child should pursue this potentially lucrative and satisfying career.

You've probably got loads of fabulous photos of your beautiful baby Sally spilling out of the album and drawer where you keep them. You've mailed spare prints of Sally to all the relatives, and still those great pictures of her keep piling up. The question is running through your mind: "Little Sally is so cute and looks so poised in those photographs. She looks as good as the babies in the magazine ads, maybe better. Could she be a successful baby model?"

The good news is that the answer is . . . Maybe!

To get some good advice, we went to the best sources we know. One of them is Drew Pacholyk, whose New York agency, Kid's Power, is devoted exclusively to booking children from infants to age 18 for photography assignments. While many of the big-name fashion agencies have children's divisions, Kid's Power is one of the few agencies that handle only kids.

Parents, Are You Ready?

According to Pacholyk, the first question to answer is whether or not you—Sally's parents—are prepared to take on the responsibilities necessary to make modeling happen. "The success of a child as a model depends on whether the parents can learn to be professionals," he says. Why? Because the parents have to get the kids to the studio on schedule. And many well-intentioned parents are incapable of doing that.

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