Many people who wish to make money through photography, may end-up earning nothing or they may earn very less if they have limited knowledge on multiple channels. Photography business is risky; it can be handled well if the risk is diversified. In this article, I would explain most important and all possible ways to make money as a photographer.
Those who are new to photography or who are not into photography they may get this question in mind, Do photographers make good money? How much do they earn per month? Etc. Answer for this question is. YES! A BIG YES.
According to the recent article I read, Photography is 6 billion dollar Industry in India. Just imagine how big it could be worldwide. Those who have taken photography as a career are making very good money.
Let’s get into the main discussion.
What are the ways to make money as a Photographer?
If you are thinking how to earn money from photography in India or in any other countries, this article would definitely help you. There are many ways to make money, let me explain one by one in detail.
1. Take-up Photo Shoot Projects:
First & the very easy way to make money as a photographer is to take up photography projects. There are different genres of photography to start with. Candid Photography, Product Photography, Portfolio Photography, Wildlife Photography, Fashion Photography, Travelling Photography to name a few.
Being a Professional photographer, I personally recommend Candid Photography if you are willing to make some good money. In a beautiful country like India, we have diversity in culture; we celebrate most of the special events such as Birthdays, Anniversaries, Naming Ceremony, Wedding Engagements, House Warming Ceremonies, Weddings and many more.
As India is very rich in Population, there is huge demand for professional photographers across India. Buy a professional DSLR to start taking photography assignments.
Early days it might get difficult to get assignments but you will have to execute some advanced marketing tips to generate your early photography sales. Create a face book page; continuously post your works there. Utilize Instagram, YouTube and many other social media platforms to build your brand.
You can charge for your work on multiple ways.
Example:
Charges per photo session
Charges for each soft copies
Charges for Editing
For Album Printing Etc.
As you become matured in your photography skills, just analyze market standard prices and adjust your price accordingly.
You may read this article to know more about Tips to Become a Photographer.
Some types of photo shoots you can do:
Maternity photo shoots
Newborn photo shoots
Pet photo shoots
Family portraits
Pre-wedding and Post Wedding Shoots
Portfolio Photo shoots
Events photo shoots Etc
Also explore product photography or commercial photography which is in huge demand. According to experts, wildlife photography, travelling photography would hardly help you making money.
2. Sell Photos Online through Stock Photography:
Stock photography is one of the trending photography businesses at recent times.
What are Stock Photos?
According to webopedia.com Stock photos (stock photography) are professional photographs of common places, landmarks, nature, events or people that are bought and sold on a royalty-free basis and can be used and reused for commercial design purposes. There are few sites which gives out free stock images for commercial use. But since they are used by many people, many big companies do not opt using free stock images.
Normally Companies who are into advertising prefer to buy images by paying money.
How to sell your stock photos online?
You will have to find marketplaces for stock photos where you can buy or sell royalty free stock images to start making money out of it. Stock images sites help you selling your images online and you will be paid the royalty on each image sold on the website.
There are many stock images websites to sell your photos. Here are some of the popular stock photo websites to sell your photos.
a. Shutter Stock:
Shutterstock is a global marketplace for artists and creators to sell royalty-free images, footage, vectors and illustrations. This is one of the popular stock photography sites in the world. Create a contributor account shutter stock and upload as many images as possible.
b. BigStock
Bigstock is the close competitor for shutter stock. Sign up at Bigstock as a contributor for free and start uploading your stock photos.
c. 123rf.com
With over 84,690,088 Royalty Free Stock Photos in portfolio and with over 600000 files getting Added every week, 123rf.com stands as one the best stock images websites to sell stock photos.
Here is the list of top 30+ Stock photo selling websites
| 500Prime | Cutcaster | Photospin |
| Alamy | Depositphotos | Pichit |
| Animals Animals | Dreamstime | Pond5 – |
| Blendimages | Envato Market | Smugmug |
| Corbis | Fotolia | Stockedphotos |
| Crestock | Fudpix | Stockfood |
| Crowdfoto | Gl Stock Images | Stockfresh |
| Photospin | Ingimage | Texturevault |
| Pichit | Image Vortex | Veer |
| Pond5 – | Istockphoto | Yay Micro |
| Clashot | Foap | Eyeem |
| Scoopshot | Twenty20 |
Source: TheWorkAtHomeWoman.com
Tips to have successful contributor account on Stock Photography Sites.
Not all the websites you approach to sell your stock photos would approve your request. Here are some tips to get your contributor account on stock photography sites.
a. Make sure you fill-up all required fields while signing up as contributor on stock images sites. It boosts credibility of your profile.
b. Completely read submission guidelines, You gotta have right resolutions, crop ratio while uploading else your images may get disapproved.
c. Add nice photo description along with good number meta tags. Meta tags help users to find your images.
d. Post in multiple stock photography sites. Do not limit your submission to one or two. Upload your unique good images on multiple sites.
On the contrary, there are some challenges you might face while you are in stock photography. You should do clear market research to understand which images are in demand.
If you upload 100 pictures of your dog or picture of your beautiful flower pot would not earn you any money. Instead take up a photo shoot of handyman services such as Plumbers at Work, Carpenters or House Cleaning Professionals Pictures. These commercial pictures can fetch you more money as companies would need them on a regular basis for their branding campaigns.
3. Affiliate /Sponsored Posts
Have you heard of free stock images website Pixabay, Freepik or Pexels? You can download any images from these sites for absolutely free. There are millions of images available for free download with and without attributions. We might get a question in mind. How does pixabay make money?
The answer is simple, if you notice on free stock images for commercial use sites, you will see sponsored post section which promotes Paid Stock images websites. Whenever Pixabay sends users to shutter stock or the advertiser and if the user makes any purchase, Pixabay gets some percentage as affiliate commission.
Affiliate marketing has become very popular method to make money at home. If you have good collection of stock images, you can think of hosting a free stock images website, drive traffic using them and then get into affiliate program with any popular stock images websites to start earning.
4. Customized Gifts
Buy some of the customized gifts making machines which could make nice gifts such as Photo Mugs, T Shirts, Frames, Key Chains, Pillow Prints etc. See if you set up a photography studio or a store to sell these gifts. Customers love customized gift items to gift it to some-one.
If you think a broader level, you can plan for e-commerce website where you take-up orders for customized gifts online process it at your workspace and deliver it to the clients. This will expand your market to the larger extent.
If you cannot afford to hire technology experts to build a website, you can simply create a store at Shopify or Ebay to start selling your products. Facebook has good features to list your products, make use of it.
5. Blogging and Ad sense Income
If you are good at writing, Blogging can be one more source to make money from photography. Create a nice blog and post about different topics on photography to drive traffic to your website. Then apply for an ad-sense account get it approved and start making money. You will have to learn about Search engine optimization to drive traffic your website.
You can also build photography products review websites, write a nice content and suggest your readers to buy photography products or any other products through your affiliate links; you will be paid for every successful order completion. Learn more about affiliate marketing from here. You can explore flipkart and Amazon affiliate programs to start with.
6. Photography as Job or as a Freelancer
For some people investing money to buy photography gears and setting up a photography studio or work space would be really difficult. In such cases, they can opt photography as job. Find out a good studio or top photographer approach them to hire you as part of their team.
Conclusion: If you have decided to take up photography as your career, do not worry. You are in the right Industry. You can make hell lot of money if you utilize your photography skills and little marketing knowledge. To get fruitful results in business, you have to execute things right and keep it consistent.
Hope you find this article useful, Do not forget to share! And let me know if you have come across any other creative ways to make money as a photographer.
Happy Clicking! Cheers!
No where I found such information, Something new and beneficial for all photographers. thanks Photopedia
Have you considered become a referral partner for Shutterstock? I believe they pay you a commission whenever somebody downloads the photo of somebody you referred.
Hey, thank you for sharing this information with us.
Keep sharing.
I love photography, Nice ways to make money. Keep it up
This is one of the best post on making money from Photography and Such a nice information thank you so much for sharing this post. Just keep writing this kind of posts.
Great article.
Being a landscape photographer most of my income generates from selling digital and physical prints from my website. Selling on your own website eliminates commissions and gives flexibility to set your own prices.
Pixpa is one great platform that allows you to do both portfolio website and e-commerce store.
Various platform available in internet where you can sell your photo online like 500px, flickr and youpic etc. Nice blog thanks for sharing !!!
Its being a months i didn’t get any client,i am very bad at dealing or talking to people. I made my website http://www.juhijaiswal(dot)com, still struggling
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