7 WAYS to MAKE MONEY with PHOTOGRAPHY in 2021

7 WAYS to MAKE MONEY with PHOTOGRAPHY in 2021

Today's content I am gonna discuss 7 ways. Some of them are passive income, others are photography fields which are suitable to get into this year 2021.

I've done all of them in the past and I did generate some income. What I would do, I would actually combine some of them together. And by the way those are also great for photographers just starting out, so let's discuss why. Number 1 would be selling stock photos.

I’ve been shooting stock since 2007 so I can talk about it for hours. In fact I created few stock videos in the past. I am gonna linked them below the video. One thing is for certain. Stock libraries are full. There is lot of photos, it is oversaturated. 

But you can still make some passive income if you gonna be very strategic about what photos you are going to submit. Social media and news are gonna be the ones which are gonna give you lots of hits. What are the topics currently talked about in news? What is discussed currently in the social media? 

The answers are straight there. Anything medical, anything money related, anything health and fitness related. People are at home struggling with weight. They are in lockdown, they are not moving. Healthy food, dealing with depression, home schooling, those are just few examples. 

What I would do right now, I would check lot of articles online, I would check all kinds of social media and I would look at the visual trends. What style of photos are popular right now? I would create lot of these with those topics. This can be done even with the smartphones. Yes they do accept photos from smartphones because the quality of the cameras in the smartphones went really up. Selling stock photos is absolutely amazing for new photographers.

I know it can be very frustrating when the batch gets returned and the photos get refused because of bad focus, or grain in the photos and stuff like that but this is what makes you better very quick because you need to improve very fast to be able to submit, get accepted and make money. This was for me by far the fastest way how to learn, how to take quality photos. I would say that stock really made me the photographer I am today. 

Then the further skills I got when I was shooting weddings, glamour and fashion. To be very honest, I haven’t uploaded anything to stock for over a year now because I am doing YouTube full time, it completely takes all my time, I can't do anything else and I am still receiving monthly commissions. 

I am still making money even though I am not uploading so it's defenitely worth to throw some photos here and there because little bit income here, little bit income there, you put it together and suddenly you can pay your bills. If you know how to do video, little bit about video, I would strongly suggest to actually upload video clips to stock as well because that's where it's not so oversaturated yet and there is defenitely ways you can make some income. There is more possibilities so I would defenitely do photos but also video if you can. Number 2 would be Real Estate Virtual Tours. Real Estate market is fairly hot right now.

Lots of people are moving. And I see it. There are 2 homes for sale in our neighborhood right now and I see lot of cars driving by. The traffic is quite big here. Real Estate agents are always looking for virtual tour photographers. They don’t pay huge money but you can certainly cover your bills by shooting virtual tours. 

DSLR Camera

I've done them when I was starting out and I can tell you that they helped me huge. I think I've done them for 1 to 2 years. They quickly thought me how to shoot in manual mode. I had to very quickly learn what is ISO, Aperture and Shutter speed. I remember I was using my DSLR with very wide angle lens and flash speed light on top of my camera. 

I also had this plastic bulb on the top of the speedlight which distributed the light evently into the rooms. You will certainly learn lots by doing real estate virtual tours. You will learn how to speed up your workflow, you will learn a lot about the framing, you will start paying attention to detail. You don’t want to have towel hanging in the kitchen on the oven, they don't like that. 

You don't also want to have toilet seat up. It always has to be down. You want to have all the little lamps, all the little lights on. You will learn how to work with different lighting situations, you will really learn lots. There are 2 ways to get these jobs. 

There are companies which are always looking for virtual tours photographers. You will make little bit less them. If you would be working solo you would be obviously charging little bit more, you can be more flexible with your rates. But with them they will tell you how much they gonna pay you.

You don't have to do marketing though, you don't have to do the office work. All you have to is just wake up, the schedule is sitting on the table.

You just go shoot the homes, come back, process the photos and upload them and then collect money. Or like I said you could be working solo. So I would do, I would contact all real estate agents in the area and brokerages.

If I didn't have photos in my portfolio, I would simply shoot my own apartment or house and show them what I can do. Number 3 would be 360 camera virtual tours.

Insta360 Camera

If you have at home 360 camera, Insta360 makes great ones, then those cameras can actually make you quite good money. As everything is shifting online, those 360 virtual tours are very helpful for people which are shopping for homes or they are selling ones. You don’t need to go anywhere, just go on the computer and comfortably walk through the whole house just like you were there.

You can use Matterport.com for that. I tested it myself and it was absolutely incredible. I did the entire house and I sent it to our relatives in Europe because some of them won't be able to fly here to Canada to visit us and they said it was lot of fun. They could walk through every single room through the whole house. I would absolutely offer myself and those 360 virtual tours to real estate agents. What I would also do, I would combine different packages.

Let's say just photography, just photography and 360 virtual tours or photography, 360 virtual tours and video if you know how to do video tours. That way instead of hiring few different people to do this job, they would hire only 1 which would be the safest at this time. Number 4 would be drones.

The same goes with drones. Here in Canada, the restrictions, the laws are very strict when it comes to flying drones. You cannot just fly your drone anywhere you want to. If you are someone with pretty good IQ, and is bored, has nothing to do, instead of wasting your time and watching TV, I would hop online and actually got a license. Study and get the proper license.

With the license you will be able to work for real estate agents, for businesses. And I believe that those are pretty well paid jobs. Number 5 is product photography. Small and medium size businesses always need good photographers to show o their products. What I would do, I would check local businesses first.

I would go on their website, check out what type of product photography they have and I think that I could beat that and I can be better than that, then I would offer myself as a product photographer.

High-Quality Photos 

To get started, grab items around you in your home and take very high quality photos for your portfolio. Those are all products. I would also visit the company’s website, get the feel of what type of photos they have right now. The background, the lighting and all that and try to make it better. 

If I would create something better then they already have, I would submitted to them, I would send it to them in email and tell them that this is how your product photos on your website could actually look like. That way you have a better chance of landing the job. I would start with smaller businesses, maybe medium businesses first because they are not around for too long, they probably don't have many connections yet, they don't know many product photographers yet. Number 6 would be selling prints. 

And I am not talking about the paper prints. I am talking about canvas and decorations. Lot of people are right now not traveling. They are not able to travel so what they do, they do renovations. Lot of people we know do renovations. And they might be looking for something to put on their wall in their new spaces. We did renovations ourselves before Christmas. 

We did our bathroom because unfortunately we had mold. The beauty about canvas is that you can even print smartphone photos. I know, I've done it before. We have some smartphone photos hanging on our walls. If you have some exceptional photos of landscapes, cities or abstract art. There are plenty of places online where you can sell those canvases and decor.

My guess is that if you gonna go through those big website, it might be little bit harder to sell, it might be little bit slower. What I would do myself, I would use my social media and my following and I would post that I actually have those canvases available for sale. 

I’ve took some liquid art photos in the past in the past, some abstract, posted them on my Facebook and some people actually asked if they can get that on canvas. Number 7 would be casual portraits for social media. Last few years I noticed an increased interest in bloggers, fashion Instagram users, models looking for outdoor photography for their social media. Even small businesses are pushed to get their message across on those platforms. 

What really works for social media are those natural, in action, lifestyle photos, behind the scenes type of thing. Candid real shots. I think it is slowly going away from that always perfect non-realistic feeling mainly created on Instagram. I think it's slowly changing towards more real and behind the scene feeling. But there is still demand for those high end always perfect photos. 

For lot of people it is very difficult to do that on their own, so I would do, I would approach local companies to see if they would be interested in covering their monthly content.

I did receive a few emails in the past, mainly from fashion bloggers. They were looking for somebody to work with on a regular basis. And I think that right now, once it gets a little bit better, the outdoors would probably be the first choice.

These 7 areas I was talking about would be suitable for beginners but also for experienced photographers, maybe the ones which are from the event industry or weddings. For now, until things get little bit better. 

Let's stay positive. I know lot of people jumped on Youtube and created channels there, hoping to generate income there but that will take a very long time before they will see some money. It took me 2 years before I was starting seeing small income on Youtube and I literally had to drop everything else. 

I was working every single day just being focused on YouTube. So this would be my honest outlook on how I would do things and honestly I hope that this can help to some of you which last their jobs, last the gigs, last all the weddings and are looking for way to make money or even new photographers which are hoping to get their foot in and start making some money.