Even at the best of times, making a career through photography can be challenging. From an abundance of competition, to price sensitive clients, or even the growing trend where anyone who owns a mobile phone now considers themselves a photographer. You can see, it’s not easy. With that, photographers should consider diversifying their offer by extending into other services. Here are 5 ways you can earn extra money as a photographer.
Run workshops
There’s two different angles you can approach this from. If you’re a veteran photographer who has developed a skillset and portfolio that is the envy of your peers, you’re well positioned. This is because you have considerably greater flexibility in terms of your target audience and the prices you charge. On the other hand, if your career is still a work in progress, there may be opportunities to share your insights about the industry with beginners or novice photographers looking for guidance – ultimately, sharing the sort of things you wish you had known sooner.
Sell prints
No doubt you rate your abilities as a photographer. But have others also been heaping praise on your work? If so, you may just have pinpointed the beginning of another way to make some extra money – selling prints. This is a fairly inexpensive process, made easier through the internet. If time and convenience matter most, you can outsource the ordering and manufacturing process to a third party. If high margins are what you’re looking for, take on the process yourself. But beware, you may find you’ll need a fair bit of free time on your hands.
Photobooth
Do you shoot weddings or special events? Rather than tying yourself up with photo requests from the same inebriated guests who want takeaway snaps from the day, look to supplement your gig through a portable photobooth machine. Sure, it may seem like a bit of a blow to your ego. But the reality is, if you can spend more time focusing on other proceedings from the event, you’re far more likely to do a great job that sees you earn the praise and recommendation of your client. What’s more, 2 fees, 1 night!
Licence your photos
Stock photography sites are often viewed as the nemesis of photographers. The reality however, is that they’re here to stay. The sooner you can accept this and leverage it to your advantage, the sooner you can earn passive income and build the scale of your photography business. There are numerous sites where you can sell or licence your images, and of course, you don’t have to do it with all your photos.
Head online
Now that social media is part of our everyday lives, photographers can use blogs and tutorial videos as a way to generate funds. Generally speaking, these avenues will be based around content that may otherwise have made it into a workshop – things like tips, guides or even reviews. You can either charge for access to the content itself, or maintain free access but support it through advertising and the like.
If all else fails, don’t give up. Try a different category of photography, or look into freelance work. As you’ll see from the above, in today’s day and age technology has given photographers greater access to broaden their revenue streams.
