Finding A Better Way To Build Your Photography Studio

12 Ideas To Make Money With Your Photographs

Instead of sitting on the images you took this past weekend, why not sell them instead?

Even if you didn’t have a client, and spent time with the family at one of the kid’s soccer games, chances are you took some great photographs. Why not find a way to turn them into some extra income? Take a look at these 12 ideas to make money with your photographs, and see how much you can get done this week.

1. Create a photo book. There is always opportunity – you just have to look for it. If you’ve attended your kid’s soccer games for several weeks, and helped coach the practices with your camera in tow, why not turn it into a fun photo book memory for the families? Or have a great idea for a vacation guide to your hometown? Check out Blurb for an easy way to make a photo book.

2. Network. Head over to MeetUp and find a few networking groups. You can work with the organizer, and offer headshots for use on social sites for a nominal fee. Give them quality images, and you exposure.

3. Design your own line of products. With companies like Zazzle and RedBubble, its easy to design your own line of products.

Ideas To Make Money With Your Photographs image source

4. Find a mom and pop café. Take a drive around town – you’re sure to find a few coffee shops that aren’t part of a national chain. Head in and chat – can you help decorate their walls?
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A Great Side Business – Teach Photography Skills

by Virtual Photography 2 Comments

If you can’t beat em, join em – as the saying goes.

At a networking group, I heard an interesting statistic today. 95 percent of all consumers with digital cameras are having problems with their cameras. They purchased them for their ease, yet now that they have them, they’re finding them anything but easy. Create a side income with your photography business

They don’t know what to do with a flash drive.
They don’t know how to get the photographs from the flash drive to their computer.
They don’t know how to organize them on the computer.
They don’t understand backup.
They don’t know how to print a photograph.
They don’t know how to correct a photograph.

I could go on and on. Chances are you can add to the list pretty easily too with the questions you’ve been asked by your family, friends and clients.
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Filed Under: Blog, Make Money With Photography Tagged With: making money with a camera, Photography Business, teaching digital photography

Plan Your Vacation Shooting Trips Now

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Even photographers need a vacation. But when you find yourself planning a vacation, don’t you always get excited to bring along your camera and shoot for fun?

There’s something fun and inspiring about being able to shoot anything you want, whenever you want, knowing it has no implications on your business.

But as a photographer, it’s also no fun showing up with thousands of others, and getting boring pictures with a ton of other tourists in them. If you’re going to shoot for “fun”, how can you do it the best way possible?

Plan Your Vacation Shooting Trips Now

Even though we head out and shoot for fun on all of our vacations, we’ve found several tips that will help you shoot at more than an amateur level – and maybe help you get some dynamite images that you can sell on stock sites, or create your own art and set up your own art gallery.

Here are 7 tips to help you plan your next shooting vacation.

1. Use your children’s breaks and long weekends.
If you have kids, you probably travel during their off times. Which means you’ll be vacationing with large crowds of people, especially at the more touristy locations. Look at your child’s schedule, and plan for shorter trips on more non-traditional times. For instance, my daughter’s school district gives them a fall break around the last week of October. This is a great time to still pick up some of the fall colors, and avoid large crowds.
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Filed Under: Blog, Get Inspired Photography, Make Money With Photography Tagged With: how to sell your vacation photos, plan your vacation shooting trips, taking vacation photographs

See A Story, Take A Picture, Make Some Money – The Future Of Photo Journalism

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With a global community, finding the right photograph to go along with a story is important. As a photographer, being able to sell your photographs at the right price is equally important.

If you love photojournalism, and love finding the story as it happens, check out Demotix. Demotix allows you to take photographs, showcase them to the media, and make money.

Demotix has connections to major media buyers all over the world. From newspapers, magazines, television and websites, if the media needs a photograph, Demotix has a connection.

One of the major concerns with all photographers is copyrights. With Demotix, you retain your copyright. They sell your image either with non-exclusive rights for anything between $50 and $3000 USD. Or for exclusive rights for the highest price possible. In all cases, they split the fee with you 50/50.

Demotix is still fairly small, with 8300 members in 110 countries. Which means it’s a great time to climb on board and find your niche in photojournalism.

Filed Under: Blog, Make Money With Photography Tagged With: demotix, Make Money With Photography, photojournalism, stock photography

Selling Your Travel Photos – Turning Vacations Into A Business

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One of the things I’ve always loved about photography is the freedom it brings to your life. That and lets face it – it’s fun telling people we’ve traveled all over photographing really cool parties. I love the look on their faces and the spark in their eyes.

Which is why travel photography is also captured a huge part of my attention span. Not too many people can go anywhere in the world, experience the best things in life, and get paid for it too.

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7 ways to sell your travel photos:

1. Every photograph you take can be sold on a stock photography site. While online micro stock agencies pay a small amount per image sold, the more images you have, the quicker it adds up. If you make it a goal to add to your microstock portfolio every month, it can add up to a great passive income source.

How To Make Money As A Stock Photographer

by Virtual Photography 4 Comments

I’m always amazed when I head out to the forums to find photographers complaining about stock photography, and the fact there is no money to be made in that industry?

It’s just photographers not true.

As a matter of fact, it is an incredible way to make money, and I’m seeing huge potential over the coming years in this field.

Last fall I touched on this in my Trends In Stock Photography and today I read more about it in Microstock Photography Is Getting Big.

By far, iStockPhoto is advancing as the leader in the stock photography industry. In February 2006, Getty Images purchased iStockPhoto for $50 million. In 2006, iStockPhoto had revenues of about $23 million. Fast forward to 2008, revenues jumped to $150 million, with projections for this year being around $200 million. Huge growth! And huge potential for us photographers!

If you’re thinking, “How can I ever make money with just a few cents per image sold?”, think again. iStockPhoto obviously has the desire to make money through sales of images, but it also looks for ways for building deeper relationships with great photographers too. Which is why they’ve just announced their newest division, Vetta Collection, which is comprised of images that meet a higher quality. They cost more for the end user (starting at $20 per image compared to the $1 per image for the standard images) – and provide more income for the photographer as well.

So, can you really make money as a stock photographer? Let’s take a quick look.

10 Sites To Find Freelance Photography Work

by Virtual Photography 2 Comments

Whether you’re looking to pick up one or two photography jobs a week, or looking to fill your days with several different clients, there are ways of connecting up with people online for little or no cost to you. Take a look at these sites, and start shooting!

Indeed.com
Indeed is a job search engine. It pulls all type of jobs, from full time employment to freelance opportunities.

GoFreelance
GoGreelance is a great place for people to list specific jobs they are looking for today – and for you to pick up work in your area of expertise.

10 Places To Turn Your Photography Into Sales

by Virtual Photography 6 Comments

Whether you’re new to photography, or have been a professional for years, chances are you are out looking for new things to try and ways to make money. Luckily there are resources out there that can make your job of selling your photography a whole lot easier. Even if you’re new with just a few images to share, these resources can have you up and looking life a professional in no time.

Have more resources to recommend? Please list them in the comments. Thanks.

RedBubble

RedBubble gives you the opportunity to set up your own gallery, start sharing in their vast community, set your own prices for everything from wall art to t-shirts, and create a unique business based around your photography.

Zazzle

Zazzle is one of the largest online players for creating customized art.

Use Fotomoto To Sell Your Photographs

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Do you sell your photography online? How difficult is it to set up?

A new entry to the photography world is Fotomoto, an e-commerce system specifically designed for photos. No matter how large or small your photograph database is, Fotomoto lets you sell your work directly from your own website or blog. And it’s a free service to start – you only pay a fee after you create the sale.

While many systems out there are linked directly to your professional lab, or require you to take on a monthly fee, Fotomoto makes it easy. With a couple lines of code dropped onto your site or blog, you can begin selling your images immediately right from your own community.

Some of the things I really like about this service:

Finding A Better Way To Build Your Photography Studio

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This weekend I ran into a photographer I’ve known for a number of years. store closed He’s been a photographer for over 30 years, and has had his own studio for about 20. I asked how business was going. And he spent over 5 minutes filling me in:

The one reception site that referred him shut down last year.
There’s too much competition for senior photography, so he has none on the books.
No one has any money, so he has no family portraits scheduled.
Potential bride’s that call in aren’t looking for quality – only price. And his prices are too high for them.
Business is so bad, he recently took a retail job, working 32 hours per week.

In life there are two types of business owners.

1. Those that do well and continue to grow their business.
2. Those that fail, and continue to lose business.

I talk to a ton of business owners every week, and I can easily predict from a 5 minute conversation who is going to grow their business this year, and who will be shutting their doors.

The people who will succeed say something like this: