Photography?

Sliar

Sliar

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I just bought a brand me digital slr. Was thinking of ways to make some money. Stock photo sites seem to be pretty tapped out. Anyone know of any good ways to make some decent cash without stock photos?

Thanks to anyone who helps out
 
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Make a service on Fiverr selling custom photos with stuff people want.
 
scraper1 said:
Make a service on Fiverr selling custom photos with stuff people want.
Click to expand...

Thats actually pretty good, thanks man :)

Anyone else have any good ideas?
 
Iam starting photography too, but as i dont make money with it, i lost many hours with photos for no money, i just make it for fun, but if i could make money with my edits it would be awesome.
 
Here's a good idea. Make a website called something like 'City Nights' or 'Urban Lifestyle' etc~. Go with a buddy, make yourselves some cool custom T-shirts, and try wearing some sort of hipster~clubbing clothes. Go in town, and make photos from all events or just for casual stuff, from clubs, nice restaurants, bars and etc, to nice girls, couples , boys etc. Be sure to make the photos in a professional style. Put those photos on your website, and soon enough, you will make some sort of brand. People will start looking on your website for various reasons. Keep doing your job until you will be known in clubs and so. After you get a bit famous (and it's easy if you just do your job, no much luck needed) then you will either receive offers or you just can propose to clubs, restaurants, bars etc for advertisement. Moreover, you can make some fast cash from private sessions. Chicks will pay you just to make them some stupid photos. Some may pay in cash, other might pay with something else. Point is, this thing goes perfect. First you gotta do work, then get fame, and finally get money :) It's really no that hard. I have buddies who did this, and it was a nice life for them, till the next year when appeared 6 more of these guys (competition) which ruined the whole thing, for this town :) But still, it works :) Have fun
 
There is No money in photography unless its pornography!

I've recently stop doing it professionally since its a cut throat industry and most consumer think they can do as well as you.
 
A couple years ago, I bought a Canon 5D Mark II and another $4k in lenses, knowing absolutely nothing about photography. Basically I just wanted to be able to say I had it.

It turned out to just be a very expensive hobby and I ended up selling everything a few months ago and buying myself a car.

The fiverr idea is good but I couldn't imagine working for $5 at a time. Since I was still in high school at the time, I had a ton of potential clients for selling senior pictures but I ended up doing most shoots for free or in exchange for a meal or something.

Make a flickr account and start taking pictures of random artsy scenes. Post it on facebook and see if you can find a few high schoolers who need senior pictures done. Do it for free or very cheap to jumpstart your portfolio. Expand from there.

You really have to be truly interested in photography to make money with it because it's time consuming and work is scarce.

Good luck!
 
IMO photography is more-so of a hobby thing, not a real money maker unless you have a fully established business and are willing to work for less than what the work is really worth. Because you can't forget, taking the pictures is half of it. Developing the photo's too, along with the cost of ink and paper and a high quality printer, and if people don't like the way the pictures came out, you have to reprint/edit them, and you have to have a frame for the picture(s).

IMO, not worth the time or effort if your doing it as a way to make money, if your doing it to make money though, make sure you have some sort of other income on the side, and make sure to market your photo business around the "hot times" of the year, keep an eye out for graduation time, for weddings, post in your local paper saying your offering photo services for just about anything, call to see the prices etc.

But like all advice, take it with a grain of salt.
In the end the choice is up to you, but that is my view on photography.
 
Do some offline business.

Undercut photographers that do weddings etc and you will get alot of business.

But make sure you work out the costs for printing etc beforehand :)
 
Not really I'm afraid. I tried the stock thing and its nothing you can make a living off.

The best way to make money is setup a website advertising yourself as a local photographer e.g. keywords "new york photography" "new york photographer" "new york photographers". Or get a job working for somebody else.

At the moment I'm a photographer for a advertising/commercial photography company. I got luck after leaving university.

So if you want to earn a quick buck its not really possible, if your thinking career wise follow my advice :)
 
A few people I know make money doing artsy scenery photography and selling it in a town that has a lot of tourists / trust funded young people. You need to find a place where you can live on that (low cost of living + tourism + natural beauty is hard to come by, but not impossible), but it certainly can be done if you have the skill and equipment. You could supplement that with fiverr and, if you have the expertise, photography tutorials online (supported by adwords, etc.).
 
I just recently quit being a professional photographer. I have several keywords such as "city photographer" on page one and on google places. Trust me, they don't start calling all at once. If they do, all they do is canvas for the cheapest bastard. On a couple of occasions, I had a studio. That even did not do it. Sure they came but the consumers are just retarded. One guy came in my studio, talked to him about things he needed. At the end, he asked me how much. I gave him a discounted price. He said "I thought it was $5 per print". I showed him the door.

Trust me, there is no money in wedding or portrait (any type). Not unless you want to get paid $500-1000 per wedding (after calculating your hourly - probably end up being at $7-10 an hour after the hours spent). It's super saturated with everyone with a DSLR! It will put you into debt buying pro equipment.

If you REALLY want to go into photography, do something that NO ONE is doing. Make sure you learn about marketing and business since photography skills is just half of it.

Lastly, the most frustrating part was finding who was REALLY interested in professional photography services. That's the hard part.

Good Luck!
Mike
 
I do product photography for my wifes online store that consists of womens fashion, i am no professional but photoshop is very useful for getting the picture perfect and optimised for the web.

I offered my services to other online fashion stores, but they will not pay you the little money you are asking for.
 
Buy yourself a good stabilized zoom lense and shoot youth athletic action photography. Parents love to buy pictures of their kids playing sports. You can go year round with various sports depending on where you live. During the intermissions, pass out a business card with your website where parents can look through your photos and buy prints of their child. There are several websites that will allow you to set up shop and sell prints, they just take a % of your sales. Good luck.
 
mikey9991 said:
I just recently quit being a professional photographer. I have several keywords such as "city photographer" on page one and on google places. Trust me, they don't start calling all at once. If they do, all they do is canvas for the cheapest bastard. On a couple of occasions, I had a studio. That even did not do it. Sure they came but the consumers are just retarded. One guy came in my studio, talked to him about things he needed. At the end, he asked me how much. I gave him a discounted price. He said "I thought it was $5 per print". I showed him the door.

Trust me, there is no money in wedding or portrait (any type). Not unless you want to get paid $500-1000 per wedding (after calculating your hourly - probably end up being at $7-10 an hour after the hours spent). It's super saturated with everyone with a DSLR! It will put you into debt buying pro equipment.

If you REALLY want to go into photography, do something that NO ONE is doing. Make sure you learn about marketing and business since photography skills is just half of it.

Lastly, the most frustrating part was finding who was REALLY interested in professional photography services. That's the hard part.

Good Luck!
Mike
Click to expand...

i disagree with your statements about wedding photography
my dads friends brother is a professional wedding photographer
he charges 5k - 10k per wedding and he does AT LEAST one wedding per month
works one day a month and makes 5k - 10k a month :)
then he just does whatever he wants with the rest of his days
im sure it also depends on the area though, he is in a densely populated area here in new jersey (right outside NYC) so that probably has to do with him getting a decent amount of jobs
i am also an amateur photographer by the way but never try to make money from my photos, i shoot photos for myself
 
Photo licensing is still a profitable, if a bit saturated niche as you mention. My suggestion would be to go the offline route and offer your services on local listing sites. Maybe even upsell websites? That's residual income right there :)
 
you have many options but i see that alot of photographers are using stock sites for making money... its not bad, even i make few hundreds of them. Just make sure you meet the requirements for stock photo and make ALOT of them :P
 
Weddings, prom, and events are where its at.
 
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