It honestly feels like everyone is a photographer nowadays. With the addition of the camera to smartphones and social media platforms like Instagram, it has opened up a whole new way for people who are passionate about photography to share their work online. Blogging is the perfect way for you to make money with your skills. Not only will it give you the power of reaching a larger audience, but it can create a steady stream of income while helping you monetize other tasks like photography workshops and printed products.
With that in mind let’s take a look at five easy ways that you can make money with a photography blog.
1. Sell your photography services to businesses
If you’ve been doing photography for awhile, you probably know that the profit that you earn off of your photos is often less than what it’s actually worth. That’s because you’re selling yourself short by taking traditional stock photo sites and Getty Images. Instead, take your amazing skills and use them to start selling your services to businesses looking for creative visual content.
2. Sell your images on stock photography websites
There’s tons of websites that will pay you to sell your images like Shutterstock, iStockPhoto and Fotolia. Even Flickr stock will pay you for selling your photos. Look for opportunities to license your photos to various stock photography sites either by coming up with a theme, or taking the time to create a “collection.” If you’re looking for more advice on selling your photos, take a look at our blog post on how to sell professional photography.
3. Search for photography competitions and submit a photo
Photography competitions are an excellent way to win prizes, get your name out there and sell your images. Browse through sites like 500px, Adobe, Fotolia, Canon and/or Nikon and search for photography contests that you can enter. Don’t just search for a general contest; search by categories such as “people,” “nature,” “cityscapes,” etc.
You can also jump onto Google search and simply type in “your category” +”photography competition”
4. If you have a decent following, perhaps people want to learn from you so create a course
If you’ve spent years learning your art, it probably makes sense to try to teach what you know. If you have a decent following of people, this is a great way for you to monetize that while also giving them something else to follow and consume. It will take some time and effort but it can be very rewarding.
You can do this on platforms such a Udemy or Teachable or sell the courses directly on your website.
5. Sell products made from the images in your portfolio
You already own every image in your portfolio, so why not figure out a way to turn it into something saleable? You could create collages for people, they could be sold on websites like Etsy, or perhaps you could even offer prints of your images. It might take some time to do this, but it could be well worth the effort.
There you have it, five easy ways on how to make money with a photography blog. Of course these aren’t all the ways that you can make money through blogging, but they are some great ways to get started while building your brand and portfolio at the same time.
6. Put your most popular photos onto merchandise like t-shirts and mugs
More and more people are discovering the potential that social media sites like Instagram and Facebook have to market products. A lot of these products are actually sold on Etsy from small businesses.
Teespring is a great example of this. You can simply upload a photo that you already own and start selling shirts with it. It’s really simple, fast and the profit margins are pretty awesome. Even better there is no upfront cost and if you have a following, you’re more likely to succeed.
7. Sell your photography products on your website
Once you start making money, reinvesting it back into your business is crucial to its success. This means that you should be looking for ways to sell your photos online through your blog or even directly through your website. Why not sell prints of the images in your portfolio? It might be a bit time consuming and tedious but it could pay off in the long run.
8. Turn your years of editing skills into a service offer.
There are so many freelance opportunities here where you can earn money from your editing skills. It’s very important to note that you have to be extremely good at what you do. You have to be able to edit photos of a high quality and deliver them on time.
9. Do a photography workshop and sell the prints
Photography workshops are also becoming very popular among people who are eager to learn new photography skills so it’s definitely an option worth exploring. Do this on your own or team up with someone else.
10. Sell your photography services to individuals rather than businesses
This is a good option if you’re looking for a more casual approach to making money with your photography business. You might not be getting paid tons of money but it’s still creating a sustainable lifestyle for yourself and still providing value to people around the world as well.
Family photos, to wedding photos. Everyone needs photos of somekind, so you can be the photographer that they can rely on!
11. If you have a decent following and you’re willing to take the time out to learn, try Kickstarting your next photography project
Creating a Kickstarter campaign is an amazing way of generating revenue for your blog. It’s also a great project for you to work on because if and when the campaign is successful, it will only help create more traffic and awareness around your blog.
12. Create a podcast about your photography niche
This one might not be for everybody, but if you have a bit of charisma and you’re able to speak about something you know well then it’s worth exploring. Create podcasts that are around thirty minutes long or even a couple of episodes of no more than 15 minutes in length. People can subscribe to your podcast directly from iTunes so if it gets accepted this is definitely something you should consider doing with one of your photos blogs.
13. Create a Photography Podcast
Podcasting is a great way to create another stream of income. Your podcast doesn’t necessarily have to be about photography, but it can be if you develop authority in that niche. You can also join my podcasting community here and find out how I made $2966 in one month from a podcast I created.
14. Build a photography consulting website
If you’re interested in starting your own business, then this can be definitely one of the most profitable ways of earning money with photography. Try to get in contact with local businesses and advertise your services.
15. Create a Photography Calculator App
This is another option that you should definitely explore if you’re able to code, or even if you’re not too fond of designing apps but you know how to code. You basically build an app that allows people to take photos quickly and the app will do the calculations for them. This could also work for wedding photographers who need quick tools for their business.
16. Create a Photography Auctions Site
If you’re able to create a bidding system for photography, this can be very lucrative. This might not be an easy project to start, but it’s definitely one you should consider if you’re interested in making money with your photos.
17. Photography Tutoring
A lot of people don’t know where to start when it comes to photographing. If you have a lot of experience in the field and you’re very good at helping people out, this could be the best option for you. Try to help them out for free or by charging a small fee at first and then increase your prices as your reputation builds up.
18. Become a social media influencer
Given your photography talents , you can definitely become an influencer in social media. This could mean taking high quality portraits and posting them on Instagram, Facebook and other sites with your followers.
19. Become a wedding photographer
If you want to get involved with photography from the start, then you should start off by becoming a wedding photographer. This is a very lucrative business if done right, so make sure that you understand exactly what it takes to run one to get started.
20. Get a decent amount of traffic to your blog why not monetise it
The best way to get a lot of traffic is to become an authority in a niche and write articles about it. You can then use AdSense or other ad networks on your blog to gain more traffic and make money.
Cover the costs of your blog with traffic but monetise your AdSense or affiliate income. This way, you can keep running your blog and try new things, while covering the costs.
21. Affiliate marketing for gear reviews
If you are looking for a way to make money with affiliate marketing in a very short period of time – and that’s what you want, then try becoming an affiliate for reviews. With affiliate marketing you will want to find a website that you can promote and link to your readers. Once your readers click on the link, then they will be taken to the product site. You will earn a commission on sales made from those clicks.
22. Turn your blog content into a Youtube channel
This is something that can work very well if you have videos explaining your photography business. You can even create a Youtube channel as an extension of your blog, and this will help increase your reach.
The wrap
Now that you armed with these amazing ideas on how to make money with your photography blog, you might be getting excited. If you’ve been trying to figure out how to make money with photography, you can try out all of these ideas and see which ones work best for you.
The most important part of running your blog is to make sure that it’s sustainable so you should pick and choose the ways to monetize your blog that make sense for your brand while maintaining the originality of it as well.
If you need some more ideas about how you can develop your blog, check out our content strategy guide.
