Photography Deals

If you think photography is a costly hobby, you are correct, it can be. But that doesn’t mean that you need pro-quality equipment to generate money from your own photos! Photography Deals

In actuality, if you’ve got a decent phone cam and a steady hand, you are already in with a shot.

However you get your clicks, you will find a growing number of opportunities to monetise photos you’ve already taken. And if photography’s already your bag, you will find heaps more ways to develop your abilities, and income; from selling your Insta inventory to pulling a Brooklyn Beckham (famous parents optional).

You know the drill: read, learn, and give it a celebration for yourself!

If you have got a digital camera (or fancy picking one up for a steal), you’ll have more options for selling pics to stock libraries, to sites for prints, or for print-on-demand products. This is because cameras will usually produce larger file photographs (although some camera phones are trumping digi cams these days so this isn’t always the case).

Got a camera phone? A growing number of inventory libraries are catering for mobile snaps, and you still have a shot at the other biz thoughts below. Keep reading!

It helps to have…

Some kind of editing program can help buff your pics for the best results, so it is worth sniffing out a nice package (and learning how to use it!) So you can make more money with your photos.

Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop are industry standards for photo editing. But they cost bucks! Don’t crack open your wallet until you’ve checked out the freebies:

FastStone Image Viewer can open RAW files directly out of your digital camera and save them as JPG, TIFF or PNGs. OK for basic edits like colour correction, straightening, cropping and contrast.
Raw Therapee is a Lightroom-like editor with loads of tools for tweaking colors, curves and much more.
PIXLR is a convincing alternative to Photoshop, and even simplifies the same shortcuts right out the bag. You can run it straight from a browser through the app for free.
GIMP can do a lot of what Photoshop excels at, though some users guess it is a tougher learning curve.
There are tons of phone editing apps to be had for free or a couple of pence, but Snapseed (iPhone, Android, free) consistently makes the best-of lists.
Do not overlook the bloatware image software bundled into your’puter, telephone or notebook. Many can make light work of the basics.

>>TAKE A LOOK AT HOW I LEARNED TO SELL PHOTOS FOR MONEY<<

Selling Through Stock Libraries

Stock libraries buy’n’ sell digital photos to use on websites, in books, on products as well as in advertisements, together with the photographer getting a cut of the sale each time.

Selling photos through a stock site is a top way to surf passive income streams: you can upload a photograph once and sell it over and over again, pretty much forever!

You may need to submit a selection of pics (and be accepted) until you can become a stock library contributor. After that, some sites will continue reviewing all your submissions, and will happily bounce any they do not think meet criteria.

What that means is you will always need to be on the ball about choosing your best shots. Don’t get too hung up about rejections, however; combine a number of websites and post pics to them to get the best possible policy.

Which Websites Pay Most?

Swing by Alamy first. Their pupil contributor scheme gives you 100% of the sales price of your pictures for two years. Total win! Your uni will need to be part of the scheme, but loads of UK and US institutions are already on the books. Photography Deals

Alamy reckons images typically sell for $90 (USD) each, but you might get anywhere from $20 to $500 depending what it’s used for. If you are not a student, or your uni is not enrolled, the pay-out’s still a fairly decent 50%. Selling phone pics through their Stockimo program (iStore only) provides you a 20% cut.

Other Websites to Check Out:

Picfair has a twist: you decide to what extent your pictures sell for. Picfair then add 20% on top for their cut, but the sales price you set is what you get if your image sells.
EyeEm: if Instagram and Alamy had a love child, this is what it would look like. EyeEm is a photo sharing website but, if you wish to earn more than’likes’, you can also pimp your images through the marketplace. EyeEm split every sale with you 50/50, with photos selling from $20-$250. EyeEm Bonus: regular how-to articles, themed missions run by large brands, plus you can upload pics via the web or phone.
Foap is constructed around phone photographers, with everything handled through the program (Android, iTunes, free). Foap sells photos for $10 each and divides it 50/50, so you will earn $5 per pic. They also run monthly Missions, where you are able to submit photos on a theme to be in with a chance of winning extra cash and perks.

Big Name Websites

Dreamstime offer up to 60% for exclusives. How much your photo sells for also goes up the longer it is downloaded: newbie images begin at between $0.34 and $2.38 (USD). If you are shooting on a phone, start with the free Dreamstime program (Android, iPhone).

IStock palms over 15 percent of an image’s sales price, but guarantee a bigger cut if you make the pic exclusive to the site. Photos typically sell for #7 or #20 a go, but the type of license or subscription program the customer buys determines how your piece is calculated.

Shutterstock coughs up $0.25 (USD) per sale on the most common subscription programs, but say you will find a bigger cut as your lifetime earnings pass different levels. To put that into context, once you’ve earned $10,000, you will be bumped up to the heady heights of 38 cents a picture…

Playing the Stock (photo) Market

Making money with stock photos can involve a significant cash-in, but there are a couple of things worth bearing in mind…

Stock photography is a numbers game: if you want sales, you’ll need to upload a great deal of quality pics to several sites.
Photos of individuals are constantly in demand, but anybody you pap might need to sign a model release form to say they are OK with you using it (your inventory library will have template forms you can print, sign and publish ).
Check the accounts terms! When will you get paid, and in what currency? What happens to your photos if you would like to cancel your account in the future?
You often won’t get a say in how clients use your photographs, so in case you don’t want your selfies turning up in advertisements for STDs or benzoyl peroxide, do not upload’em!
Sign-up for contributor newsletters, as they could clue you in on what sells, what to snap next, and even how to enhance your camera or editing skills.
Add plenty of keywords when you upload your images. It helps people find (and hopefully buy!) your pics.

Selling Your Prints

There is loads of liberty in selling prints (i.e., printed copies of your photos). You decide what to take, who to sell to, and for how much and, like selling through stock libraries, it can be a nice little passive revenue earner.

Now, before you leg it down to Boots to batch publish your holiday snaps, there is a little more to it. While you can run off photos on your home printer or at a high-street lab, better quality means higher profits! Photography Deals

That means using a proper printing laboratory (one which excels in art or framed prints), opting for specialist paper, or even selling restricted or signed editions. Sounds like a drag? Not necessarily; there is inspiration below to get you started.

Use a Photo Host

Photographer-friendly website hosts give you a secure place to store your digital pics, a portfolio (so you can show’em away ) and purchasing tools (so you can sell prints, downloads and wall art).

They even handle the printing and any stamp each time you make a sale. Hashtag hallelujah, right?

But the big catch is, not only do they charge for hosting your website, they also take a cheeky cut from each sale — and that’s not everyone’s cup of cocoa! If you want to give it a whirl, be aware of free 14-day trials until you pony up the money: try Zenfolio or Smugmug.

Get Your Own Photo Shop

Alternatively, you could always get your own website or Etsy shop and hang onto more of your gain!

Obtaining prints or gifts to market is also super straightforward; go for print-on-demand and you won’t need to store some stock (or be out of pocket if you can not shift it!) .

Sell on Social Media Platforms

Eventually the social networking giants will wise-up and begin letting us market photos and other content right from our profiles.

But until then, take a hint from street photographer Daniel Arnold: he provided Instagram followers the opportunity to order prints from his feed and made $15k in one day. Obviously it helps if you’ve already got a solid fanbase, but if you have talent (and the ideal hashtags) it’s worth a shot!

The best thing about selling on social media is that you don’t even need a website: your feed is your portfolio, and you have got a enormous potential audience!

>>LEARN HOW TO SELL YOUR PHOTOS AND VIDEOS ONLINE HERE<<

Go print-on-demand

Print-on-demand is a brilliantly simple way to make moolah from mouse mats, keyrings, t-shirts, bags, books and more — often using zero setup costs.

The actual beauty of print-on-demand is that while you can advertise a great deal of goods, none of them really exist until somebody buys’em — so there is no inventory to store, lose, or fall over. Better still, there are sites out there that do all of the producing, printing and submitting for you, so all you’ve got to do is take the photographs!

Photo books

First stop: Blurb, the self-publishing publishing platform (learn how that all works here!) .

Blurb lets you create photo books by simply importing your Facebook or Insta images — and you’ll be able to sell your finished novel on Blurb or Amazon.co.uk. You can even advertise books on your website (if you have one), but have Blurb/Amazon handle the payment. Easy! Photography Deals

Gifts and Goodies

Turns out you can slap a photo on pretty much anything, from shower curtains to pet clothing and PJs; and you don’t even need a glue gun to begin!

Most print-on-demand outfits allow you to upload your photographs (or illustrations), select which products you wish to sell them on, and then give you a cut of the profits if they market.

CafePress pays you 10% if your products sell in their market, but you can opt to have your own online store and add a mark-up into the price (which you get as your royalty) rather than It is free to set-up and run a shop, but CafePress take 10% of your royalties each month, up to a $10 max.
Zazzle lets you set your own royalty rate between 5% and 99 percent but, while it’s tempting to dial it up to full whack, keep in mind that your cut is added to the sales price: go OTT and you may find it more difficult to make sales.
With Spreadshirt you can add a mark-up of $1 to $20 on items sold through the marketplace, or you can start your own shop and catch 20% commission.
Redbubble starts with a product base price and lets you add on a mark-up — the default is 20%, but you can tweak it as much as you like.

Running a print-on-demand shop is low-fuss and low-cost — if you are happy with the occasional sale, it can be a wonderful way to make money on the side for relatively little work.

The word from successful sellers is that, to earn proper bucks, you will want to put in the hours (so the same as a job, sadly). We’re talking uploading lots of photos or layouts, getting the word out, and generally making an effort!

Go Freelance

Selling photographs anonymously online is easy enough. But if you want to build a rep, get more glory or just have customers of your own, here are some tips to get started as a freelancer photographer:

Know your niche. When it’s people, pets, food or something totally left-field, it is easier to market yourself whether your portfolio showcases what you do best.
Take time to learn your craft. You may get lucky selling stock in case you don’t know your aperture out of your elbow, but you can’t afford to chance it if someone’s paying you for wedding pics!
Work out your rate and make sure it covers your time, your prices and leaves you a little on top for gain. And get insurance for your equipment!
Give to photo events, portraits or parties for friends and family to develop a portfolio, and ask them to spread the word for you. Or search out your favourite bloggers and pitch them your pic ideas!
Batter your social media account with your best pics, let folk know you’re available, and tell’em how to get in touch. Get cheeky and take alternative promo shots for brands, then label them to get noticed.
Get in contact with picture editors at magazines, newspapers or websites and ask if you can submit photos or cover local events.
You may have more chance of getting adopted by Madonna than getting a press pass, but it’s like a golden ticket that can get you into sports, fashion and other exclusive events. You will need to apply each time (or become a member of the National Union of Journalists) but, as soon as you’re in, you’ll get loads of saleable photo opps!

While everybody with an Insta account seems to reckon they’re a pro photographer, the truth is that being a freelancer may be the toughest route you can take.

You’ll need tons of patience, perseverance, good shoes and adequate pics — and you may well have to give away images for free when you first start out to get noticed. If you are in it for the career, do not quit. If you are in it for the money, get your game on with the other thoughts on this page in the meantime!

Bonus Tips for Aspiring Photographers

Carry your camera anyplace — and not just when you are doing something or going somewhere special. Loads of companies and brands are after photographs of everyday life and often it is the simple things which make the best pics — believe streets, food (street food?) , facial expressions, loved ones, pets, sports… anything!
Back-up your best pics (or any you’d hate to lose): keep copies on an external drive or in cloud storage (Dropbox provides you 2GB of space for free).
Once you start getting sales, get to grips with tax and the freelancing fundamentals. It will save you stress in the long term, and can save you cash on your tax bill.
You might not have the ability to sell photos should they comprise trademarked products, brands or even specific buildings. Check out the terms with your stock library, or get the company involved and ask if you require permission to hawk your snaps.
Don’t just do the same-old or what everyone else is doing. Quirky, cute or weird is always in fashion. Amen to that! Photography Deals

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