Table of Contents
Tip #1: Get As Many People as Possible to See Your Pictures..................................................................4
So how do I get those pictures online?..................................................................................................4
Not ready to build a website yet?..........................................................................................................5
Tip # 2: Use Micro Stock as Spring Board to Major Income...................................................................7
Blueprint for making BIG money with micro stock photography.........................................................7
Tip #3: Find those businesses that NEED a photographer like you.........................................................11
Tip #4 : Photograph Events that Pay Tons of Cash..................................................................................14
Tip #5: Take Newsworthy Pictures and Chase that Story........................................................................17
What kind of photos are considered newsworthy? ............................................................................19
Tip 6#: Shoot Aerial Photography for Homes And Businesses...............................................................20
How Much Can You Make with Aerial Photography?........................................................................20
Do I Need to Fly to Do Aerial Photography?......................................................................................21
Shoot Great Aerial Photos without a Plane.........................................................................................21
Tip #7: Make a Ton of Dough with Other People's Pictures....................................................................23
In Conclusion...........................................................................................................................................24
Hi, my name is Jonathan Souza and I have shot all kinds of photography during my career; everything from landscape and nature to weddings and sporting events. This little, easy to read ebook is a compilation of some of the things I have learned about some of the big money makers in the photography business. There is no need to be a starving artists as this business can bring in HUGE amounts of income, and I will be talking about just a few of those methods. Hope you enjoy.
There are many different ways to make money with your camera. The key is to start with one particular kind of photography that works best for you and stick with it. I will be highlighting some of the best known ways to make a lot of money with digital photography, so if you love photography like I do, I am sure your mind will be spinning with ideas after you are done with this book.
In this ebook I will be giving 7 tips on how to bring in the money with your camera. These tips are by no means exhaustive and that's why I am writing another ebook that will have all the juicy details of how to make it big with this business. So sit back, and enjoy as you learn how to hit it big with your passion of photography. Don't you just love the thought of getting paid for something you love to do!
Exposure is crucial. Not only will having more people see your pictures help you make more money, but it's also good for branding.
If people begin to see your pictures in more than one place they will begin to see that you are a big name photographer. Suddenly, the demand for your pictures will go up and people will be willing to spend more to have your images.
Years ago it would be tough to get a huge amount of people to see your pictures if you were just starting out, but with the internet it's not only possible, but it should be one of your main priorities to make your pictures viewable online. No matter what kind of photography you want to get into, if you don't have some samples of your work online, you will be shutting out what could be a huge portion of your income.
So how do I get those pictures online?Well you have two options:
1. Get your own website
2. Use existing websites for free
There are a lot of advantages to having your own website. No matter which option you pick, you will eventually want your own website. This helps with the branding process and gaining brand recognition too. Get your own name as the domain name i.e. “yourname.com” or you can be a little more creative.
Even with absolutely no HTML or web design experience I was able to set up a website using the free software called Wordpress. If you can use a word processor you can build a site.
First you need a webhost. I recommend Hostgator. Check them out here. They are the cheapest around with amazing customer support if you ever need help.Using their cpanel you can install Wordpress with a couple clicks of the mouse.
Then just find a nice free Wordpress theme and you are ready to let the world see your photos.
Not ready to build a website yet?
Here are some ways you can use some free websites online to show off your pictures and your portfolio:
1.
http://www.myphotofolio.com/
2.
http://www.voodoochilli.net/
3.
http://www.onetalentsource.com/
4.
http://www.deviantart.com/
5.
http://www.flickr.com/
1. Blogger.com 2. Wordpress.com
Or if you want you can use some social networking sites and use the power of Web 2.0. Here are some free sites you can join to advertise your photography for free and get some traffic to your portfolio:
1.
http://squidoo.com
2. http://hubpages.com
3. http://www.zimbio.com/
4. http://www.wetpaint.com/
Then you can put the URL of your portfolio on your Facebook, Myspace, or Linkedin pages so your friends can see your work.
You can also use that URL in your email and forum signatures for even more exposure.
But if you really really REALLY want people to see your pictures you have to put them where people who are LOOKING for pictures go.
And where is that?
Every month there are MILLIONS of people who visit micro stock photography sites with money in hand, ready to buy photos.
You can upload your pictures to these sites and people can buy downloads of them. So after you put your pictures on there they can sell over and over again while you do nothing but rake in the dough. It's really quite simple and there are some making 6 digit figures with micro stock right now.
Once you build up a nice size portfolio on the sites below it will not be impossible to be making at least an extra $1,000 a month, and the more you work at it you can make that $1,000 per week. Many give up before they see profits like this, but don't be like them=)
Here are some of the sites I am making money on right now, while at the same time getting more exposure for my photos.1. www.Dreamstime.com
2. www.istockphoto.com
3. www.Fotolia.com
4. www.shutterstock.com
5. www.Bigstockphoto.com
I would recommend starting with dreamstime.com. They are fairly lenient on accepting your pictures and you can upload a bunch at one time to start selling them one download at a time.
Fotolia is a great place to start too. There is one certain picture that I sell at least once a day on Fotolia and it makes me over $100 a month, every month, no matter what.
In the next email I am going to show you my blueprint for making BIG money with micro stock photography so hold on.In the mean time you can get signed up at any of the micro stock sites above by clicking on the links provided.
OK, say you have a picture like I mentioned in the last chapter that is selling fairly consistently on a micro stock site like Fotolia or Dreamstime, but it is only making you about a dollar a day on average, instead of $3. You can have pictures selling much better than this, but let's just use a conservative figure for our example.
Now, let me remind you that not every picture is going to sell well, and it may take a while to learn the ropes.About 20% of my pictures on micro stock make me 90% of my earnings. And that's because I did not understand what kind of pictures sell and which ones don't when I first started. Now I know how to take pictures that I know will sell like crazy. This is a topic I cover extensively in my ebook (which is coming soon by the way).
So let's do the math to see how much you can make even selling your pictures for a dollar at a time:One picture in your portfolio makes you $1 per day on average.
Then let's say you are able to grow your portfolio online to 100 pictures. A decent start. You can do this by just adding 10 pictures a day for 10 days. If even 20% of your pictures are as successful as your first you will be making $20 per day.
And remember you can sell your photos on more than one micro stock photo site at a time. I am selling my pictures on about 6 micro stock websites right now and that just multiplies my income with each picture I submit.
To remind you, here are some of the best micro stock websites I recommend and make me money right now:•
Dreamstime
• Fotolia
• Istockphoto
• Shutterstock
• Bigstockphoto
Let's say after a few months you are able to work very hard and build up your portfolio to 1,000 images on just one micro stock site. Again, assuming that only 20% of your pictures are able to sell once a day you can be making $200 every day, and even if you don't work the next week, that money will still come in.
Now will everyone who does this make $200 a day from their pictures? Absolutely not. But they CAN if they learn how to take pictures that people want to buy.
If you think you can just throw any old picture up on a site and see the money roll in then you will only be disappointed and give up too soon. Here is a process that can help you make the most money for your pictures using micro stock:
• Focus on the pictures that are worth more to buyers
• Set aside a couple hours a day to start building up a stock photo portfolio
• Aim for getting 100 pictures or more every month approved by a site.
• After six months you will have 600 pictures.
• Review what pictures are selling the best.
• Keep taking pictures and submitting to micro stock sites.
The key to making a huge amount of money with micro stock is to submit hot selling photos often to the sites. If you do this it will be difficult NOT to make money.
Once you are making $1,000 or more a month, don't stop. As you keep working to build your portfolio with new photos you will continue to make money with the old ones that are already approved.
And therein lies the beauty of this strategy of making money with your camera. You are building residual income. You will be able to shoot weddings, senior portraits, and birthday parties WHILE you are still making money with your stock photos.
And by the way, you can get a lot of stock photos during some of your photo sessions too.Some of my best selling photos I have taken while shooting a wedding. I would see the brides shoes in the window with some nice light coming in, take the picture, and upload it to a micro stock photo site later on to make even more money. Keep in mind that you will need to put some language in your contracts to use some of those pictures for stock photos.
And any pictures of people will have to have a model release signed by those people. So for now, you might want to just focus on non-people photos.In the 3rdtip for making money with photography we will look at finding those businesses that need a photographer like you.
If you want to get a jump start in micro stock photography and need some guidance, I would recommend checking out this guide called Stock Photography: Going Digital. The website is VERY cheesy and he really needs a new design going on there, but this is an ebook written by a guy who is making a KILLING in the world of micro stock, so you might as well learn from the best if you want to become the best.
Not all businesses want to simply buy their pictures off of a micro stock photography website because they want a picture that no one else has. Sometimes a photo will be sold on istockphoto thousands of times and the market gets too saturated with that one picture for a business to use it. Or sometimes they just need a very specific picture of the products that they make.
Here is why big and small businesses need your photos:
• for brochures about their company
• for their website
• to show clients what they make
• to use in all forms of advertising
• for ads in the paper
• for putting together user manuals about their products
• for pictures of their workers and executives
Show them how having better quality pictures of their products would lead to better sales. Show them how more professional looking photos can make a huge difference from a clients point of view.
So what kind of businesses need you as a photographer?Here are just a few you can get started on, and then add to the list as you go.
• Restaurants - They need pictures for their menus as well as their advertisements. Taking pictures of food on a plate is a bit like stock photography. It's very simple and you can make any dish look fantastic. The restaurant will benefit from those pictures in their ads as well. We all know how amazing a picture of food can look when you are really hungry, so show the owners of the restaurant that by having some nice pictures of the food they serve they can get more customers. They can put these pictures in a flyer or some other form of advertisement to help grow their business.
• Offices - One thing that most offices need are portraits of their employees. Executive portraits can be a very lucrative business. For your first business you can do them for free so you can build up a small portfolio of executive portraits to show to other businesses some samples of your work. Just set up a schedule for getting the pictures done in a timely fashion (as most employers don't want to waste any of their employees time) and use the same basic backdrop for each shot. Some basic lighting techniques would help with this.
• Builders – Every builder is proud of the houses they have built, but they want some professional photographs to reflect their work. You can take some exterior shots but get a lot of nice interior pictures as well. It helps to turn on all the lights and only use your flash if you are bouncing it off the ceiling or through some sort of diffusion device to give it a natural look.
• Corporate Events - At a corporate event you will have to capture people speaking behind a podium, activities and use an over all photo journalistic kind of approach. There can be big big money in photographing corporate events. The company may want to use your pictures in their brochures or other forms of advertising so keep this in mind as you shoot the events.
• Corporate Portraits – There are a lot of really pathetic corporate portraits out there. Show the company the need to have pictures of their “big wigs” in their working environment so the picture will reflect what they do. This will give the photos some personality. These can be done in a very professional manner too. Usually it's not too hard to improve on the portraits that the company already has unless they have used a professional photographer before.
• Website Pictures – Have you ever been on a website and just said to yourself, “Wow, these pictures are horrible”? Well you want to put it nicely to the website owner, but show them some of the pictures from your portfolio and show them how a website is usually the first impression a person gets of your business. Great pictures on your website can be a huge step in the right direction to looking professional and increasing business.
• Architectural photography – Companies that have either huge high rise buildings or just big complexes all need great images of their buildings. This goes right along with good branding and companies will pay big bucks if you can get the perfect picture of their building that really helps represent them will. If you feel sneaky you can even take some pictures of the building and then show them to the company and see if they are interested in buying them.
• Press Release photography – When a business has a press release they want to make sure they have good pictures to represent them. Most of the people that see these pictures will only get that one shot to get the first impression of the business so you can advertise doing some press release photography to make some extra money. You can shoot some grand openings as well and then offer to deliver it to the newspaper company for submission.
Advertising is one of the biggest parts of a companies budget, so why not take advantage of that? You need to be able to take pictures that are both artistic and that carry the concept that the company wants to convey.
I really enjoy taking pictures of the products the company makes. You need to take as much pride in your picture of the product as the company has in producing it.
A great picture of their product can be a huge benefit for them in advertising as most of their buyers will make decisions on what they think about the product by just looking at the picture. Look at the pictures they already have and see if you can improve on them.
The list of businesses that are needing photographers can go on and on. If this is a niche you would be interested in, go ahead and start building a portfolio of some business pictures to show your potential clients.
But first some advice: When you are taking pictures at any event you really need to stay on your toes. It is not a very relaxing form of photography but it sure is exciting.
You have to keep your eyes roaming about constantly to make sure you are not just capturing what every one else is looking at but also their reactions to what they are seeing as well. Reaction shots sell the most in any event photography situation.
So don't just shoot the bride coming down the aisle; shoot the grooms reaction to seeing her in her dress for the first time as well. Don't just take a picture of little Billy hitting a home-run; capture his parents screaming in the stands as well.
How to Get the Prints to Your Clients:Before talking about the different ways to make money with event photography, let me just say how easy it can be to offer prints to your customers. I never handle prints anymore.
There are services online that you can use to upload the pictures from the event and then charge whatever you want for them. The customer gets on that site and orders different sizes of different pictures and the company will accept the credit card payment and print and ship the pictures for you! So all you have to do is upload the pictures and you are done.
The service I use is called Printroom.com, but there are others like Smugmug.com and Photoreflect.com as well.I highly recommend using a service like this because then you can just concentrate on taking great pictures.
Here are some ways you can tap into the huge market of event photography:
• Wedding Photography - This one is pretty obvious but it has to be mentioned. Many photographers make their full time income from shooting weddings. I have shot dozens of them in a very short period of time so I really had to start turning some of them down since I wanted to focus on other things besides wedding photography. But you can very easily charge between $2,000 and $5,000 per wedding and just shoot on weekends. $20,000 a month for weekend work is not too shabby.
If you want to learn more about how to make the most money out of your wedding photography I can highly recommend a product called PhotoBizforU. The easy to follow guide will step you through everything you need to know in making money with wedding photography.• Amateur Sporting Events – This is another huge market right now. This includes everything from tee ball, to little league, high school basketball, football, and any other sport that children play at their school, church or for a league. You can either be paid by the parents of the kid you are to take pictures of or sometimes coaches will want to hire you. I have done some team portraits at the YMCA before. If you are being hired by the parents of the player you will want to focus the pictures on that one player, but if shooting for the whole team it will take a little more work and you can charge much more.
What's the best way to get started with shooting sporting events? Just bring your camera and the biggest lens you have to the game and start snapping pictures. Keep that business cards on your pocket because you will be passing them out like crazy. I have drummed up all kinds of business using this method. If someone comments on your camera or photography just tell them where they can see the photos online. You will either gain a potential customer or client. Either they will buy some of your photos of the game, or they will want to hire you to take pictures of some other event. Either way, it's a win win, as you gain experience shooting sporting events and also get some good publicity too!
• Birthday Parties – There are parents willing to spend big bucks on their
• Baptisms – I have been paid very well for doing some church baptisms. These are very special occasions for the parents so they will usually buy a lot of photos from your site afterwards
• Business Special Days - I remember doing some photo work for ChicFil-A when they had a big promotion. It was a lot of fun and there were a ton of people there. They had face paintings and of course the Cow was doing all kinds of crazy things so I had to be on my toes during that whole time. Big days are great for businesses as they can have some of those pictures in the paper or just use them in their newsletters.
• Graduations – You can often charge as much for a graduation event as you would for a wedding, depending on how much work they want for you to do. Often you will not only have to cover the ceremony and get some nice professional shots but also a graduation party and shoot in a more photo journalistic style.
• Baby Dedications – When photographing a baby dedication in a church you will want to be careful not to be too intrusive. Use a telephoto lens as much as possible and stay out of the way. Of course if the parents actually want you up front and close to all the action you need to do that. They are the bosses and you are the employee for that day.
There are all kinds of events you can make money from, so keep your eyes open and always be willing to offer your services to an even that is going on. You may even have a singer or musical group want to hire you to get some great shots for their CD cover or website.
The key to a successful even photo session is to make sure you have a meeting with the clients before the even takes place and go over all of the boring details.Make sure you know what they are looking for and what they expect of you. This puts you at ease as well as the clients. You don't want to have to guess what the client wants and then hope you get it right. This will just lead to more frustration for you.
The sports event photography market can bring in tons of money. So if you like sports this may be the perfect way for you to start making money with your camera.
There can be a lot of work in trying to get off the ground and running in shooting sporting events and that's why I think you will love this ebook I have found called Sports Photo Success.
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