How to Earn Stable Income from Your Photography: Where and How To Sell Your Photos
One of the main challenges of being a photographer is the unsteady and seasonal nature of the job. Whether you’re a professional or semi-professional photographer, you’ve probably had times when you didn’t have as many jobs as you’d like. Your specialty and the season can also affect your income. What can you do during the off-season to keep your photography income stable?
The biggest advantage of photography is the freedom to use your time the way you want. If you earn enough, you can easily travel. However, if you have a family or traveling is not your cup of tea, there are several options to keep busy in the current market during the off-season. Let’s take a closer look at your options.
You might already assume I’m talking about passive income. It’s important to know that there is no such thing as purely passive income in photography. To be successful, you need much more than just the joy of sharing your expertise. Many photographers put as much effort into their passive income as they put into their photography jobs. On the other hand, there are easy and effective ways to combine both.
Creating and selling content
First of all, you need to be clear about what you want to do. Ask yourself—Do you photograph something specific, or can you talk about an area of photography in an interesting way? If you have some time to offer and want to share your knowledge, try selling content and monetizing your expertise.
This is far from “just keeping busy during the off-season” like I wrote about in the introduction. Your efforts will be rewarded with one more bonus. This will diversify your photography income. Remember how many photographers were affected during the pandemic. Relying on a single income source is risky under any circumstances. That’s why content creation can help you diversify your income and have a backup in case of emergency.
Building a community
Creating content isn’t just what you do when you don’t have a lot of gigs. In order for your content to have regular subscribers, you need to continually build your community. That is, you must maintain awareness of your work and bring something new to the table. You have to be in this for the long haul.
Besides the platform where you’ll be selling your content, it’s important to have a social media presence, where your followers can see your work.
Another great idea is to send out a newsletter. It’s also a good idea to use tools like Google Analytics to evaluate your strategy and reach. There are many marketing strategies out there, but regularity is important. Carefully consider what you enjoy most about photography and find a way to systematically do it.
What content to sell
Teaching materials
Teaching is one of the most natural paths a photographer can take. It’s a field that is quite saturated, but because almost everyone takes pictures, it gives you a wide range of potential customers.
You can create online tutorials that focus on a specific topics, such as analog photography. You can also appeal to the masses and focus on a topic like mobile phone photography.
Platforms like Udemy, Skillshare, Kajabi, or Coursera give you the space to do this. Once you create a course on one of these platforms, you can make money each time someone buys, views, or subscribes to your course. Other similar platforms are Herohero, or the Czech Forendors.
Selling your photography
Selling your photography is the polar opposite of stock photography. In stock photography sites, quantity and the ability to sense and deliver what’s trending makes the difference. However, when you sell your own photography, you rely more on exclusivity. If you are an established photographer, you can create a page on your website to sell your best work.
You can also try selling your photography on platforms like Etsy or Shopify, but like with stock photography, it’s quantity over quality. Plus, these platforms are so oversaturated that it’s not easy to break through.
Selling custom presets
Selling custom presets for different photo editing software like Zoner Photo Studio X, Lightroom, or other programs is another popular way to use your expertise to expand revenue streams. Whether you’re into landscape, wedding, or travel photography, you can create and sell a variety of unique genre presets.
Presets can be sold separately or as a bundle on platforms like Etsy, Creative Market, or directly on your website.
Blogging
A blog is a standard for photography. However, only creating a blog doesn’t bring you income, unless you also start doing affiliate marketing. It’s more about building a community. You can monetize the useful tips, tutorials, and stories behind your photos by drawing attention to buying your photos, presets, or photography classes through your blog.
Stock photography
Stock photography is a hot topic at the moment. The income of many long-time contributors is declining, while it’s getting harder and harder to start from scratch. In addition, the market is threatened by the massive development of artificial intelligence, which is improving every day. Some of the best-known stock photography sites are Shutterstock, Adobe Stock, Alamy, Getty Images, Unsplash, and iStocks. AI still comes up short on video creation. This may present an opportunity for some photographers.
It’s worth a try!
Much of what I’ve written in this article may come off as skeptical. But don’t let the current state of the market put you off. Creating passive income takes some initial creativity, but with some persistence and determination, you can go far. By creating multiple sources of additional income, you can achieve greater financial security for the future.