The best job one could ever have is doing what you love. If you have a knack for photography, you can rake in the big bucks with it. If you have already spent an amount on professional equipment (yes, even your phone camera counts), you can go about monetizing your skill by offering photography services to others.
Read on to learn how to transfer your skills online and make money while sitting at home via your photography:
1. Freelance editing
Just taking the photos doesn’t necessarily mean the job is done for most people. In fact, photo editing is a skill required beyond event photography. It involves logo editing, templates, editing stock images to incorporate brand colors and fonts, and changing the lighting or background of photos—a skill that is required by all kinds of clients and businesses.
It’s very simple to make money via freelance editing—simply sign up for freelancing marketplaces like Freelancer or Fiverr, and give your pitch for a photo editing gig.
2. Create cards, polaroids and prints
This is also an easy way of making money using the photographs you take. Whether it be wildlife photography, landscape photography, or portraiture, you can easily convert these into sellable items. Let’s say you live around a tourist attraction- take photos of the landscape, convert them into postcards or prints, and sell them to the attraction’s gift shop.
Photographs can be sold in the form of calendars, wall hangings, apparel, bags, phone cases, mugs, stickers, and the list goes on. Online services like Printful help you seamlessly integrate the process and sell your photographs online.
3. Photography courses
If you are an experienced photographer, there are many valuable places where you can make money. You have the opportunity to sell your knowledge to the next generation of photographers. Places like Skillshare or Udemy help you design your courses, offer them to a base of clients, and have them pay you via subscriptions to your tutorials and content.
You only need some course-designing skills, something worthwhile to share, and a knowledge of what people want to learn to get started on teaching photography online.
4. Digital products
Many photographers make serious money online by creating templates of their work and publishing them online for purchase. Figure out where a market for the kind of photos you take exists. You can start to convert those photos into downloadable templates such as cards, brochures, save the dates, calendars and postcards. This offers a diversification of your photography pursuits and makes you money on the side.
5. Content creation on YouTube
The first place all of us go to when we are required to learn something fast is always YouTube. You can capitalize on that by offering your skills to large potential viewership and making money off of YouTube’s monetization policies.
The best way is to create a channel. Learn more about how to correctly market yourself on YouTube for increased monetization. Then, create tutorials and the like for your subscribers to watch. You can also use your YouTube channel to promote what you are doing on your individual blogs, stores, and Skillshare at the same time.
6. Prints
Got a local fair coming up or want your photographs to be available in a lot of other places? Selling prints to art stores and home décor stores or offering photo printing services for your clients if you are photographing and recording their events are both relatively easy ways to make money. Use your website, Skillshare affiliations, or create your own Etsy store to promote prints of your photographs.
7. Convert photos into stock images
With new businesses starting up every day, photographs that serve as stock images are an incredibly important market to tap into. Get into contact with places like Getty images or istockphoto to sell them your photographs. If you are a celebrity photographer or cover high-profile events, Getty may offer you a sizeable amount of money to purchase your photos.
8. Supplies and products
The next most profitable way to make money through photography is to set up a shop of sorts. New cameras, lighting equipment, photography software, lenses and the like keep getting updates and have a large market of buyers willing to trade in photography equipment.
Dabbling your fingers in the trade of photography equipment is a profitable prospect. So get yourself some affiliates, promote them in your blogs and videos, and make a portion of the sale every time your viewership purchases from the company.
How much money can you make as a photographer?
Depending on your skill level and how easily you are able to break into the market, you are likely to make money accordingly. For amateurs or people who do this as a hobby, services can be offered at no cost or below a comfortable $100, probably not more. Photography students can charge up to $50-$100 per hour, or $25-$50 per photograph, to cover events such as weddings, parties and celebrations.
An intermediate level of skill can earn a photographer $100-$150 per hour and above $50 per photograph. This requires some level of professional training as well as experience. Pros can make around $250 per hour if their work is exceptionally good and they are in-demand photographers. This requires the commitment of a full-time career and the best equipment investments as well. Pros can sell their images for upwards of $250 per image to museums and galleries.
Get clicking!
The best way to break into any market is to have commitment and passion for what you are undertaking. If you have a passion for photography and are reasonably talented, you can use a plethora of methods to earn some serious bucks by offering your skills to others.
There is a multitude of inspirational content available on the internet. From here, you can select the route and the kind of photography-based careers you would like to pursue.
