Photography Monetization Methods

摄影变现方式

As they take a camera in their hands, everyone thinks about home to make money through photography.

I know a lot of methods, and I have a personal experience with some of those. Let me share the main ones:

• Filming for image banks. Nowadays, this activity involves a lot of photographers worldwide, hence the competition is very strong. To make good money via image banks, you have to monthly upload hundreds, or even thousands of processed photos.
• Private photoshoots: child and portrait photography, pregnant women, married couples. It’s a creative and interesting work, but you need to have good interpersonal communication skills and be able to film people really well. There’s a big number of photographers filming people, hence the competition among them is strong. In 99% of cases, such photoshoots are not expensive.
• Filming weddings, corporate parties, children’s holidays and other events. This job is physically hard. The photographer often has to work at the weekend and stay up late at night. Not everyone is able to handle a mode whereby you need to process thousands of photos within a month.
• Photographing nature and animals. Such photos can be posted both in image banks, and specialized magazines or publishing houses. To get a spectacular shot, photographers may spend months traveling.
• Photographing various PR products. This includes clothing, jewelry, food, furniture, outfits, real estate, mills, fishing tackle, household appliances, etc. Such orders are largely available, you just need to search properly. The demand for good photographers who can make high-quality selling photos is also high.

If a photographer is well-known and has their own style, there are a lot more monetization methods, including making calendars for big companies, publishing and selling original books, teaching activity (running workshops and selling online tutorials, presets), and so on.

Anyway, practice shows that creating cool photos is sometimes much easier than using them to make money. And, of course, alongside the ability to create good photos, a photographer has to learn some marketing, to build their own brand and explore the ways to monetize their art.

At the same time, it’s such a pleasure to film just for yourself, not to think about what these shots are for and how they can be used in the future. It’s great just to enjoy the creative process…