What Does Photography Income Mean To You?

A number of years ago, I was given a book that literally changed my life. It’s called Rich Dad Poor Dad. You’ve probably read that one, or one of the many Robert Kiyosaki has written in the decade since that one debuted. (If not, go and grab a copy today.)

At that point in time, we had an extremely successful business. We photographed around 30 weddings per year, averaging 4 to 5 figure sales per wedding. Yep, we were making a very healthy six figure income, and having the time of our lives flying all over the place to capture wedding memories.

Yet even though we had a blast doing our 30 weddings per year, this book made us look at things a bit differently.

Our entire livelihood relied on 25 to 30 clients per year. Not only did we have to work hard to find those 25 to 30 clients every year, we had to work hard to keep them happy.

Okay, that wasn’t difficult. We loved what we were doing.

We had to be very careful with the way we “played”. Skiing in the winter? Forget it. What if we broke a leg? Ever tried being a wedding photographer with a broken leg? So even though we loved what we were doing, we were still making conscious choices about how we lived.

Okay, that still isn’t too bad right?

But what about if the economy turned and it became harder to find those 25 to 30 people? Or what if one or two of them gave you all sorts of problems? The stress could literally eat you up for months at a time. Add in increasing competition, and you can quickly see that choosing one path like this for a lifetime of income isn’t the smartest thing to do.

Rich Dad Poor Dad opened up our eyes to that, and we quickly started to change.

Changing Your Goals

The goal is to develop several forms of income that allows you to make money in a variety of different ways. We decided to leverage all of our skills and knowledge, and use it to make income in a variety of ways.

The first part is understanding the different types of income.

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