Income Streams for Photographers Part Two - Products and Education
As I am building my own photography business I have been looking at possible revenue streams to help earn a living from photography. There are quite a lot of possible revenue streams and this list is the first part of all of the income streams that I have been able to find. I’m not recommending you pursue all of them for your photography business nor am I suggesting that I am pursuing all of them. This is just some of the information that I have managed to glean together as I research possible business models.
These revenue streams can be applied to any genre of photography, but it will be up to you to figure out how to organise them into your business plan. To be honest, when I started my photography business I had a few ideas of how I was hoping to earn a living but the execution takes time and dedication and a lot of investment before any of these streams come to fruition.
Some successful photographers are able to rely on one of these streams as their principal income source but many, including myself, would recommend that you diversify and use multiple possible sources of income. By diversifying and selecting several revenue streams, if one of them has a dry spell and you are unable to earn from it (think of guided sessions during a pandemic) then the other sources of income can keep you afloat until it’s possible for you to re-engage that faltering stream.
Under each of the items in the list there will be a little information about what it takes to curate that resource into a reliable source of income.
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Part Two
Part two is concerned with how you can provide value as a photographer to individuals, either that’s by selling them a product or by giving them an education. Part one was concerned with how it is possible to earn an income from other companies and/or corporations principally through the supply of images for a particular need. Now we are looking at ways you can earn income from an everyday person, who doesn’t require photography for a specific goal but instead is looking for value in photography for another purpose. There are 5 items in this list but each one can be divided into multiple revenue streams with a little imagination and they are: tours, prints, digital products, books, and courses. The next and last part, Part Three, is about modern revenue streams that have developed alongside the entrepreneurial, tech savvy photographer.
Tours, Workshops and 1 to 1 Guided Sessions
This is one of the best sources of income to a modern landscape and wildlife photographer. In Part One, I explained how commissions have dried up and how stock market photography has increased thanks to the wide availability of images from online agencies. That increase in images was provided by an increase in the amateur photographer. Suddenly photography was no longer the field of a respected few, advancements in technology meant that it became a consumer technology and people took to photography as a hobby, like a duck takes to water. Everyone had to have a camera and everyone started to take pictures. A lot of these hobbyists decided to sell those images on the side, just for a bit of fun, and that has increased the availability of good quality images on the internet.
Now to be frank, I don’t begrudge the hobbyist photographer for trying to earn a little extra on the side from their hobby. The fact that it has impacted photography as a profession is not their fault (I blame the corporations that decided to sell their images at a stupidly low rate). I think photography as a hobby is a noble pursuit and it has opened a market for people that want to make a living from photography, enjoy sharing what they do, and are good teachers.
Hobbyist photographers, at some point, will want to take their skills one step further, or to visit a particular location, or try something new, and that is where a photographer is able to provide value to them.
Instead of looking at hobbyist photographers as competition, we can look at them as valuable sources of income. We need to provide our time, our expertise and, most importantly, we need to provide a good experience.
I classify my guided photography sessions into 3 categories but 2020 put my plans to introduce the last 2 on hold:
1-1 guided session - one day, highly focused on what my client wants, I want to get to know what they want from me, what they hope to achieve in the future, any particular images they crave, and then I will try and create an exclusive itinerary for the day of photography that they have scheduled with me. Because it is highly focused on what my client wants, we can build a connection and really look into their photography. I can provide tips and insights for them to take forward with their independent work, and with any luck by the end of the day they will have a set of images they can be proud of.
Workshops and Masterclasses - a weekend activity, maybe 3 days long, and a small group. This is usually focused on a particular subject matter, working on one subject over the days to create a project of images that can be proudly used in each of my clients portfolio. Small groups mean that I can concentrate on what each member of the group need and hopefully they will be able to work together and make friends. Tips and insights can be given to all members of the group, and if a particular member would like to share their knowledge they are welcome too.
Tours - multi-day activity, could be up to a week or two, and a small group. A bit wider ranging that a masterclass or workshop, we will cover multiple subjects and locations and create a project of images with a broad brush reflecting the various subjects we have photographed.
I prefer to keep my groups small with a maximum of 5 people and typically less than that, because I want each of my clients to feel me engaged and interested in what they want to learn. If there was more than that it would be too distracted with each person, and I would worry that someone would get left behind and not enjoy their experience. But other photographers are able to manage with larger groups easily, it depends on the person and the clients.
The hardest part of building this area of business is finding clients. You need to have some imagery that stands out and ‘brand awareness’, people need to know who you are. By producing amazing imagery that catches the eye of every hobby photographer, soon they will be looking for your guided photography sessions, as they hope to learn from you and meet a photographer that they admire. This can be the most difficult part of building a photography business, finding ways to beat through the crowd and stand out.
Prints and Physical Products
The income from physical products can be incredibly variable. Since I’ve launched my shop for prints and physical products I have made a few sales, which I’m very proud of, but which will not support my business independently. It is quite a saturated market and again your imagery needs to stand out from the crowd. You need to produce quality products that people are proud to own and you need to price yourself competitively because there is no point in pricing yourself out of the market.
I offer only a limited range of physical products: prints (including a special set of limited editions), cards, and calendars. I decided to focus on those. But the possibilities of products are endless, as pretty much any substance can have a print. Look into what products sell best in marketplaces such as Etsy and determine what you want your products to say. I’m not a big fan of mugs, cushions and various paraphernalia with images on them, so I choose not to market or produce those products. But that will depend on you. If you would buy it, then why not produce it?
Once you have a selection of products that you are willing to sell, establish a store. I currently have 2 shopfronts: my website and an Etsy store. If I’m honest my Etsy store outsells my website but that’s because it has an established marketplace, there are already the consumers that you are after browsing the Etsy store. So I would definitely recommend selling your products in more than one place. With physical products you could even sign up to local art fares and craft markets to sell directly to the public.
To succeed at physical products you need to market them, remind people that they are there, and this is one area that I fail at time and time again. If you are good at marketing yourself then you will be a successful photographer because that is the biggest skill that you can have and I might even suggest it’s more valuable than being able to take epic pictures, after all you can take an epic picture but without good marketing it won’t go anywhere.
The other way to succeed at physical products is to build relationships between you and your prospective customer, and that is were ‘brand awareness’ comes in again. People need to know who you are to want to support your work and to hang a picture of yours in their homes. The other relationship you can exploit is between the customer and your photography subject, for example, my mum bought a suitcase with a photo of a black Labrador on it because we had a black Labrador. Because that photographer had a good image of a subject my mum cared about she bought that suitcase. How did she find that product, brand awareness through social media marketing done by the photographer. Thanks to the relationship my mum had with our dog and marketing, the photographer was able to earn a little income.
Revenue from physical products can be a bit variable, and typically around Christmas and the holidays you will sell the most products for the year.
I would suggest looking at print on demand services because otherwise you can be left with a lot of stock that is just not selling, and you’ve got money tied up in products that are not moving. My first calendar, I did a product run but when it came to selling them, I was left with more than half the stock. That’s primarily because my ‘brand awareness’ is still growing. But as it has a limited usability, namely the year it was produced for, I now am stuck with a product that is useless. Hopefully with some ingenuity I will figure out a way to repurpose my excess stock, but I would recommend looking for a print on demand service so you are not left holding a lot of worthless items.
Digital Products
Digital products are essentially a downloadable product and I know that you will have seen various examples of this in your social media timelines. Some digital products off the top of my head include:
Lightroom Presets
Photoshop Brushes and Tools
LUTs (Look Up Tables)
Wallpapers for phones
Print Your Own Posters and templates
Mockup Images that people can customise with their own products
There are probably even more possible with a little imagination. The great thing about a lot of digital products is that you only need to create them once, upload them to your marketplaces and sell them. In fact the easiest part to them is the making of digital products, which you might even be able to accomplish in a day. The hard part of digital products is finding customers, and that leads once again back to marketing and ‘brand awareness’. You need to incentivise your prospective customer into buying your product.
Books and E-Books
Books can be incredibly lucrative, there are several types that you can produce and, if you are lucky, you could get a publishing deal with a publishing company rather than self publish. You can produce both physical books and e-books and depending on the type there are many options. Let’s divide it into 2 main book type:
Book OF Photography - by this I mean a ‘coffee’ table book, a book that is about the images typically on one theme or project.
Book ABOUT Photography - by this I mean a book that teaches an aspect of photography, discusses issues in photography, or provides information to the reader, and the actual photography of the book is second to the written content.
Both of these books can be produced with a publisher or through self publishing. Personally I think a book OF photography is best suited to being printed, e-books OF photography are often a bit lack lustre and you get the best experience when holding the book. Whereas, books ABOUT photography can be produced either in print or solely as an e-book.
E-books are rather convenient, because it is a digital product, after you have produced it once you just have to market it and build a relationship between you and your customer. You need to provide them with value through your e-book but you are not holding stock.
Print books on the other hand, are fantastic to hold and flick through, but they can cost a lot of money. You can either produce a book in a print run and market it as best you can until you have sold all of the copies. Or you can find a print on demand service for your book, that typically costs more per unit but means that you are not holding stock, you don’t have money tied up in a product that is taking up space. There can be quality control issues with print on demand services, so just be careful and do your research.
If you want to work with a publishing company, then you will most likely need a literary agent that specialises in photography books. The agent’s job is to help you land a deal and a lot of publishers will only accept submissions from an agent. If a publisher decided to take up your project, you have made it to the gold standard. There will often be an advance payment for you to complete the manuscript, you will have an editor and you will have the marketing team of the publishing company to back up your project.
Self publishing on the other hand, means you will have to organise all of that yourself. I would suggest the more you invest in your product, the better it will sell. By that I mean, consider hiring a professional freelance editor to look over your work before you finish, and to really invest in the marketing of your book to sell it.
Before I move on from books, there is a new kid on the block, and that is the Zine. Zines are a halfway point between fully fledged book and a magazine. They are typically self published, small and feature the photography of the creator. They are OF photography, featuring a selection of images on a particular theme. They are a lot cheaper to produce than a fully fledged book and can be another awesome physical product to include in your shop. Especially if you can create a series of Zines that make a collection. That can be a valuable source of income as your brand awareness grows.
Digital Courses
Courses can be another valuable income stream but they rely upon you having something worth teaching and for your customer base to acknowledge you as a source of valuable information. They can be made of a combination of materials, including video, pdfs workbooks, images and other downloadable content that helps your customer to learn something.
As with everything else in this part, it requires a brand awareness and a connection between you and your customer. You need to have plenty of high quality examples to clarify your lessons, you need to be able to explain yourself well and create a structure through which a customer can learn a new skill. The video content has to be filmed and edited together in a professional way, otherwise the customer could feel like it was not worth the money. Investment in your product could mean a higher and more stable revenue stream.
You could higher a videographer to help you produce the course, they can help with filming and editing, and it can give a professional quality to the final product.
Like the other digital products after the initial effort of making the course, the next step is marketing it, but it can become a valuable source of ‘passive’ income in that you don’t have to actively produce new content, unless you decide to produce another course.
Competition in courses can be quite demanding, you need to convince people your course is better than the competitions and that they will derive value from it. If you’ve made an e-book you can repurpose that as a basis for your course and include it in the bundle or vice-versa.
Conclusion
These 5 revenue streams are all concerned with providing a customer with something, whether that is an education or a product. In Part One the revenue streams focused more on how to sell your images to companies, whereas this part is concerned with what you can do with your knowledge of photography and derive a value for an individual from it.
All of these revenue streams can be applied to any genre of photography, but the key is to not focus your efforts on everyone but to target a particular market: the hobbyist photographer. The hobbyist photographer is the person that will gain the most value from your skills. Of course books and prints have a wider appeal than just other photographers but more than likely your first sales will be someone that is interested in photography and saw your image and want that as an inspiration for themselves.
Tours and workshops are fast becoming the most sustainable way for a photographer to earn a living, but the market is becoming more and more saturated, so trying to find ways to stand out from the crowd will increase the appeal. That can be in a unique environment, a specialist technique, or building on your profile as a photographer.
The other products mentioned throughout this can be a great way to have multiple revenue streams and through a combination of them, you may be able to craft a substantial income.
The important thing to note is that all of these income streams are dependent upon you building a relationship between yourself and your consumers. They need to respect you as a photographer, admire your work, and most importantly know who you are! The best way to accomplish that is produce amazing images and get them in front of people!
Part Three is about Modern Revenue streams that we can take advantage of as photographers.
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Written by Daniel Long
Daniel Long created DRL Photography as a place to showcase his work as a photographer. Daniel has learnt a lot about photography and wishes to impart this knowledge with you, although the world is an ever changing place and he always says “you can never learn everything.” So as he makes his way, he continues to learn knew techniques, skills and information about photography. He focuses on Landscape and Wildlife photography and Daniel has a special focus on Scotland, his home away from home. As well as writing about photography and taking pictures out in the field, Daniel offers guided photography days so he can share his knowledge and locations in an effort to give his clients the best opportunities possible. Have a browse around this website to see his images, guided experiences and articles about photography. If you have any questions don’t hesitate to get in contact.
