Few things are as rewarding as making money doing what you love. The fact of becoming a professional not only means an income of money, but also that people value and appreciate your work enough to hire you. This is one of the greatest satisfactions a person can have: doing what he loves and being recognized for it.
But the problem arises at the beginning, when you are considering how to make the leap to become a professional but you are still not very clear about how to do it. Or, if you are an amateur photography lover but some extra income from your work as a photographer would not hurt at all.
In today’s article I will give you some ideas so you can orient yourself and start making money with your work as a photographer. What are you waiting for to stop being a talented amateur to become a professional?
To be professional?
Before starting with the different ways for you to start generating money as a photographer, I want to clarify what I am going to call “professional” throughout the article:
Being a professional is not “living off photography as your only income”. A professional is a trained person who is in control of his work, and who above all things, performs it in an ethical and responsible manner. A photographer is not more professional than another because he earns more money or because he has better equipment, but rather because of the responsibility with which he does it and the ethics with which he treats the people who work with and for him. Professionalism is a way of life, an attitude towards it and not a way to earn money.
What do I mean by this: you can be a professional regardless of whether you live exclusively from photography or not. What matters is that whatever you do, you are responsible and respectful towards all the people who are involved in your work, whether they are clients, colleagues or collaborators.
How to make money with photography?
There are many different ways for you to generate income using your camera, as many as you can think of. In fact, I am sure that great ideas to generate money thanks to photography will be left out of this article, but the ideas that I leave you below will be very useful for you to take your first steps as a professional.
The main thing is: passion. If you don’t feel passion for what you do or plan to do, don’t do it. I understand that the need to pay the bills often forces you to do work that one would not normally do, but sooner or later, if your only motivation is money, it will end up being noticed in your work.
Don’t let money be your only motivation. Love what you do.
Your portfolio of work or website
When it comes to buying a product or contracting a service, almost all people go through the same place: the Internet. Think of the Internet as a large shopping center: if you want your work to be sold, you must build your showcase.
Whether to hire your services for a wedding or to buy one of your photographs for a presentation, most consumers today use the Internet to compare possible alternatives. The Internet has become an almost obligatory step when making purchases or contracts and it can be your great ally or your worst enemy.
You can become renowned by word of mouth, as your clients recommend you to others, or you can speed up the process a bit and take advantage of the Internet: show your work there so that any virtual passerby who may require help is at hand. your services.
Doing it is not very complicated, in fact, Mario explains step by step in a video tutorial made by him how to create your own online portfolio to show your photographic work.
No matter what type of photography you plan to do (advertising, sports, product, social, etc.), if you don’t have samples of your work available online for all your potential clients to appreciate your work, you’ll be missing out on what could mean a great deal to you. source of income.
ideas and projects
Selling photos online: Internet photo selling sites are becoming more and more popular. Known on the web as “micro stock”, they are platforms that allow millions of photographers to upload their photos and offer them for sale. You can earn from 1 to 5 dollars for each photo sold, although saying it sounds very easy, but getting to make your first sales can become frustrating. It is not as simple as it seems.
The people who really make a difference using these sites are the ones who spend a lot of time researching what types of photos are most in demand and producing similar images.
As I told you before, although it sounds very simple, it is not so: it is not enough to upload your entire catalog of photographs to the internet and sit down and wait to become a millionaire, but it is not so complicated that you get discouraged and lose yourself from try it. Here are some tips so you can start selling your photos online on the right foot:
- Try to produce commercial images: the biggest buyers are companies, advertisers, publishers, designers who need to buy images to dress catalogs, pages and magazines. It is generally cheaper to buy a photograph already taken than to hire a photographer to produce it.
- Build a portfolio: do not upload images to upload to see if you are lucky. Work your photos and series of these in order to offer more variety and variants to those people who may need them. As your portfolio grows in quantity and quality, you will see how the income begins to increase. You can, for example, put together a series of landscape photographs of tourist destinations in order to attract travel agencies, etc.
- Analyze everything: take your time to browse these types of sites for ideas to produce your next photos and take your time to try to understand what is most striking about your photos so that you can emphasize those details in the future.
- Do not stay with a single portal: If you upload your photos on the main online photo sales sites, you will increase your chances of selling your images. Here is a list of the main ones:
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- Shutterstock
- DepositPhotos
- Photolia
- istockphoto
- dreamstime
Before starting to build your online galleries, I recommend that you read the following article carefully, so that you can learn more about your rights and obligations as a photographer: “Detailed Guide: How to Protect Your Photos on the Internet? Rights, Licenses and Contracts”.
The only thing left, before starting to build your online galleries, is that you pay attention to the following aspects:
- The fact of selling a photograph in no way implies that you are transferring the copyright of it, quite the contrary, the only thing that you grant to the buyer and only to him, are the rights of use of the photos that he has bought. Online platforms are only the intermediary between you and the client.
- It is essential to maintain the maximum quality of your photographs since these sites are very demanding about it. It is more important to keep the technical quality of your photographs high than the concept that the photo conveys. Remember that they will be used for purposes unrelated to you. I recommend that you carefully read the following articles: “Detailed Guide: How to Make a Correct Measurement and Exposure in Your Photographs” and “24 Ways to Get Photos Sharpness in your Photographs”.
- If your photographs show people who are easily recognizable, you must attach the corresponding contract to the transfer of image rights of each of these. Again, I recommend that you read the detailed guide about rights, licenses and contracts that I mentioned above.
- In your photographs they cannot appear as trademarks, logos or registered designs. Keep this in mind since, if they appear, you will have to edit them and delete them before uploading them to the network.
- Each and every one of the images that you want to sell must be accompanied by: title, description, and keywords or tags. The more time you spend describing your photos, the better they will be in the searches of potential buyers.
- Always upload your images in the highest possible resolution in JPG format. The higher the resolution, the more money you can charge for these. But be careful, do not interpolate your photos (increase their size using software) as you will end up ruining them.
Businesses and companies that require a photographer
Not all companies, when preparing their brochures or web pages, are willing to use in these, photographs purchased in portals such as the ones I mentioned before, since they could also have been purchased by other companies and even their competition.
Today, almost all companies require photographic material for their businesses, whether to prepare brochures, catalogs, advertisements or their web pages, but also to take pictures of staff, equipment, events they hold, etc. The best way to reach the consumer is with impressive images and this is very clear.
Here is a small list of businesses or companies so you can start thinking about how you are going to offer your services in each of them:
1. Restaurants: Whether for their menus, their advertisements, or their signage, restaurants require the services of a photographer in order to show the various dishes they offer to the public. Taking this type of photography is not complicated at all and does not require the latest equipment. Food first passes through the eyes, before passing into the mouth. Don’t worry if you’ve never done it, here’s an article that will be extremely useful: “11 Food Photography Tips and Tricks.”
2. Companies: whether to upload to the company website or to highlight the employees of the month, organizations constantly require portraits of their employees and executives. A job as a photographer for an organization can be very lucrative. In order to succeed as one, you just have to become an expert in portraits. How? Putting into practice the following tips: “11 Tips and Tricks for Impressive Portraits” and “A Trick to REVOLUTIONIZE Your Portraits”.
3. Construction: Whether it is to document the progress of a work or to advertise a completed work, construction companies will require the services of a photographer who manages to portray their work and allows them to promote it later. Taking photos of exteriors will not represent any inconvenience and to master interior photography I recommend that you read the following article: “Tutorial: How to Take Interior Photos Correctly”.
4. Corporate events: Whether for a conference, a fair or an exhibition, companies and organizations often hire the services of a photographer like you to photograph the entire event. Hold meetings with your client so that you can know their expectations regarding the final material that…