95% of photographers never make money: how to be in the successful 5%?

Photography is one of the most difficult professions for making money. At first glance, it would seem that this is not the case, but those who think so are deeply mistaken. To be a successful photographer, you need to create several streams that will provide income even when your photos are not selling. We’ve put together some tips for you that you can follow to make money from your photography.

The first thing you need to do is learn the theory. You need to figure out how to apply filters, change the contrast and which photo background editor apps to use. You can read about all of this on Skylum’s blog!

Stock photography

Historically, stock photography has always been a great option for photographers to make a significant amount of money from their photos. Unfortunately, those days are long gone. The reason is that the market is already oversaturated with pictures, so users don’t spend a lot of time finding the right photo masterpiece. But stock photography is still capable of generating income. The most important thing is if you have enough pictures.

Before you start cooperating with a photo stock, find out such points:

• What commission do they pay photographers for each picture sold?
• Do you need any proof of the uniqueness of the photo?
• Does photo stock have a specialty, and if so, what is it?

Sell prints

While electronic photos are a good thing, printed photos are still in considerable demand. You can either sell prints directly from your website or use a third-party print store. If you have the necessary equipment, we recommend using it, as the cost of working with a third-party store will be much higher.

Plus, if you use special editing apps and achieve perfect color and contrast, the price of printed photos for your audience can be even higher. You will need apps to change the background, apply filters, and make collages.

Sell digital art (NFTs)

There has been an explosion in digital art in the last few years, and many photographers now sell their photos as NFTs (non-exchangeable tokens). If you don’t pay much attention to the details, this essentially means that you can sell digital versions of your photos to collectors just like someone buying a physical print.

The bottom line is that users buy the rights to the photo in order to sell it again. This is different from copyrights. Let’s take a simple example: you bought a painting and got the opportunity to resell it legally. However, the copyright to it remains with the author, so you have no right to say that you painted it with your own hands.

If you are interested in this area, study it in more detail. There are quite a few aspects that you should definitely pay attention to in order to protect yourself.

Create presets

Every photographer who has been working for more than a year has his or her own style. This also applies to image processing. If you’re an editing expert and you have a few presets why not sell them online?

You might ask, how do you find people who want to buy ready-made presets? Actually, there are quite a few of them. You can look for an audience on thematic forums or get rid of anxiety by running ads on social networks. The second option will allow you to get popularity faster, but you will need to remember that you will also need to spend money to promote the page.

Lead courses and workshops

Do you know how to compose correctly, how to shoot with a long exposure, or which free apps to change photo backgrounds are the best? Make money with it!  You can create your own blog and write educational articles on it. We are confident that you will soon gain an audience of many thousands. And if you decide to promote your page with advertising, it will happen even faster.

An alternative is online courses and lives master classes, where you will communicate with your audience. If you choose this option, be prepared to spend more. These include:

• Special equipment that you can use to show examples;
• Registration because everything has to be legal.

If you want to save some money, we recommend learning the basics of advertising and trying to bring your profile to the social network yourself.

To summarise

Unfortunately, none of these ideas will get you rich in one minute. You will have to take the time to create a plan of action and then proceed to execute it. Keep in mind that you are not the only photographer doing this, and you will be competing with people who have been building their reputations for several years. So, as with any business, you have to take a long-term approach and have a clear strategy for what you want to achieve and how to do it. Start by processing your photos, because that way you have a much better chance of selling them. Skylum’s blog has many articles that talk about photo background editor apps, filters, and contrast. Read, learn, and you’re sure to succeed!