TOP 6 Most Profitable Photography businesses
This the full transcript of my YouTube video — The TOP 6 Most profitable photography businesses. I thought it would be a good idea to have it in writing on the blog.
Besides being an amazing artist, you will also need to know your way around business planing to become professional photographer. After you combine these two it comes to the fight with the competition.
The battle actually can never be won, because you will be facing people with similar ideas and passion for photography just like yours. So in the end, it will be a healthy competition that might end up in collaborations or even merging your businesses.
After having your business properly set up you will need to increase your presence on the net, be everywhere. The quality will be seen by potential clients eventually, and then, with the help of word-of-mouth your business will start growing and if clients are satisfied, new ones will fight to hire you.
This basically applies to every photography style. The expenses might be higher or lower depending on which field you want to dive into. But the work and the fight with the competition will always be the same if you want to turn your photography into a business.
The TOP 6 Most profitable photography businesses
1. Marketing/Social Media/Corporative
You go on Instagram or Facebook and you are bombarded with ads from anybody that has a debit or credit card with at least 1$ on it.
So making the decision to go all-in might be the easiest way to make money in photography business of this kind.
Here the competition is fierce, since there are large marketing companies employing photographers, lowering the cost of the actual photoshoot just to sign the client on a longer term deal.
A great example for this, is photographer Peter Csakvari, who managed to strike a deal with some big clients with his unique style. The Hungarian artist creates miniature mock-ups of everyday life by using pin-sized figurines. One of his latest big clients was Red Bull.
2. Event Photography (Wedding, Concerts, Conventions)
Almost every YouTuber that talks about photography or video has worked or is still working in this field. I also did my fair share 10 years ago, when I was doing the editing of the photographs taken by the pro-weding photographers.
To start by yourself you might have to work for free at a few weddings to fill up your portfolio, or maybe work for a pro-wedding photographer for a small fee.
Besides making money by photographing them and sending them the shots, you can also sell prints to the guests during the wedding. First you collaborate with a printing studio, then when the business goes up, invest in printers and employ someone to work for you.
With this photography business you can grow also in other branches of the wedding industry, by offering lights, video, decor etc.
3. Family/Baby photography
The investment is not that big (separate video/post) but you will need to acquire clients and need a portfolio. So you could do some shots of your kids or the kids of your friends, neighbours etc. and you will see the wildfire effect.
Lots of money in this stuff…
4. Travel & Landscape & Wildlife Photography
Sadly nowadays is very difficult for these type of photographers to get exposure if they haven’t started in the beginning of Instagram, but not to discourage anyone, amazing art always sees the light!
These types of photography are extremely popular but there are not that many clients. The big travel magazines or websites, have a list of photographers with whom they work, and very rarely they are open to try new photographers.
The other thing is that, the so called ‘ honey pot’ locations around the world are over photographed by pro-landscapers many times. This means, to sell an image of Fitz Roy for example will be extremely difficult, because every magazine has terra bites of that similar composition.
5. Stock Photography
To start is not that expensive, but requires endless day and night work. Shooting images of seeds, cables, nails, the tip of a fork, broken tile and other wierd things. Yep, there is demand for everything, just use your creative imagination. I’ve read that some people have earned up to 40/50K a year just from stock photography.
6. Photojournalism/Street/Documentary
Ok, these three are basically the same but not the same. “ Same, same but different!” — as they would say in South East Asia.
You can google it if you want to learn more about the difference of these styles, but we are here to talk about whether they are profitable or not as a business.
Capturing the right moment is not an easy thing. For some it will never happen while some will capture it today and tomorrow. Right moments can be sold for lots of money, depends of the emotion and the story in that moment.
I’ve always been a freelance moment hunter and I had some luck during my years, but I also had some bummers.
You can watch the movie “The Bang Bang Club” a true story about the life of a freelance photojournalist/war photographer and see how the things are going in this photo industry.
There are still some people out there that buy street shots, but not even as many as landscape or wildlife photography buyers.
Back in 2015 I did a photo story of the village of Langtang, Nepal. Those images would’ve never seen a light if it wasn’t for the earthquake that destroyed the whole village few weeks after. I wish those images never saw that bloody daylight…
Okay, that was my TOP 6 list of the most profitable photography businesses. If you did like this round up, stay tuned for the next one… The TOP 5 most expensive photography styles.
Originally published at https://eatsleepwander.com on July 8, 2019.
