6 Ways to Pivot your Photography Business and Diversify Your Income

Disclosure: This page does contain affiliate links. Which means if you like something and make a purchase, I will make a small commission. Again, I will only suggest things that I super love and truly believe would be a benefit to you

There could be any number of reasons you aren’t booking clients. Maybe it’s the off season, maybe you just moved your business, or maybe (our current situation with Covid restrictions in 2020) the government tells you no. Portrait sessions and events are being postponed and canceled across the nation. Photographers are left with what? No income? That doesn’t have to be the case. You may not be able to photograph clients right now but there are ways to make money even when you aren’t booking clients. Even better, some of these are passive income, meaning you can make money in your sleep. Diversifying how money is coming into your business is not only beneficial in a global pandemic but smart for any small business.

sell stock photos

This is like photography’s best kept secret. If you are a photographer more than likely you are sitting on a treasure trove of photos that could be making you money. Guaranteed, you have hard drives full of images, either paid work or personal work that are just sitting idol. Might as well make some money by selling your images to companies in need of photo content for their marketing. Whether you are a portrait photographer or a hobbyist, anyone can make a few bucks from selling their photos for stock. There are companies that will take your photos and sell them for you. Obviously you will get a small cut from the price a client pays for them but hey you didn’t have to find the client. I have been contributing to Offset for a couple of years making close to $1000 a year. It’s not much but it’s more than I would make if the photos were just sitting on my hardrive. Photographers who take it more seriously can make a living just off stock photos bringing in a few thousand dollars a month. Totally depends on how often you are adding images and how many you have available for purchase. If you would rather go the route of selling your own stock photos you can do that too! Just remember that you need to have signed model releases for any images you are selling that contain people with recognizable features. Whatever you decide is great. Remember you are making money off images you are taking anyway. It’s a win-win.

run a print sale for past clients or as art

Running a print sale is always a good idea when you need money in a pinch. You can run a sale for current and past clients through their gallery or set up a print shop with some of your favorite art and travel photography. Make it easy for people to find and give them reason to purchase (aka discount). I love using Instaproofs for all of my client galleries and print shop for the ease of running a sale. Automated emails inform anyone who has visited that gallery telling them about the sale and reminder emails before sale ends just to make sure they don’t miss out. I can even have the print orders auto fulfill through instaproofs so I don’t have to lift a finger after setting up the sale dates. Easy peasy and it can bring in some good money that I otherwise might not have made.

remote teaching: one-on-one mentoring , courses, and PDFs

There are a lot of things you can do with this. Its all about what your expertise is and how you want to go about spreading your knowledge and helping others. Just because you can’t meet with people face to face doesn’t mean you can’t teach them. One-on-one mentoring is great. Depending on what people want to be learning from you, you could easily do this from home via a zoom call or phone calls. One-on-one usually is a bit more pricy because people are getting more of your undivided attention but can usually be most beneficial in narrowing down what they need help with and you can personalize their learning experience. Some more passive income options would include creating a course or pdf that could be sold either through your website or through a community like: Clickin Moms, Hello Storyteller, Creative live and more . This requires plenty of work for you when creating the product to sell digitally but can bring in passive income for years to come. Teachable is a great program for setting up an online course. SendOwl is also great program for delivering and selling your digital products. You can also set up affiliate programs for your products to have past customers or students help promote the product (giving them a little money for each product they sell to a referral).

product photography

Adding product photography into your portfolio is a great way to make some money when you aren’t meeting clients face to face. This can be done in your personal studio or in your home. Adding commercial and product photography to your offerings can lead to work and money you can make from home. The companies or brands that you work for can send product to your house for you to style and photograph by yourself. You will need to work with them on expectations and pricing to determine what that will look like. Depending on the product or company, this could blossom into a professional working relationship where they are sending you products to photograph annually, seasonally, or even monthly.

blogging and affiliate links

Blogging. I know its like the bane of our existence as photographers but blogging CAN bring you money. Usually when photographers are thinking about blogging it is all about getting your work out there for people to see. That is all great and super important in terms of sharing your content, but there is alot of potential for blogging for other reasons. Blogging is a great way to educate your clients, blogging helps increase your SEO and website traffic. One thing that photographers often forget or neglect is that blogging and the use of affiliate links can actually bring them money. As you are blogging and talking about photography or whatever else you are sharing, there are alway places you could add an affiliate link. I have shared products and resources that I love and have used within my business. I have even shared items that I like to pack in my camera bag or things that I think are helpful for traveling with kids. All of them have brought in money for me in different seasons. When you create evergreen content and include links to products that people actually want and can benefit from you can make easy passive income from optimized blog posts for a long time. This is the absolute best resource I have come across for Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing. Although it is written by a blogger for bloggers there is a lot that can be applied to a photography website.

Sell merchandise

Does your brand or story have something it could sell as merchandise? Maybe a fun graphic tee, stickers or buttons? If the merchandise aligns with your logo or has a link to your business it could double as advertising. I have seen photographers that have created all types of merchandise that aligns with their brand that they are able to sell. You will have to look into creating the merchandise and costs associated with ordering, keeping stock, and logistics for shipping. This could be really fun and appeal to other photographers or even potential clients.

Those are just a few ideas on how you can diversity the money you are making and make passive income while you sleep. When you have multiple streams of revenue within your business you are not putting all of your eggs into one basket. I see so many photographers filling up their calendars and burning out because they think the only way to make money is to photograph, photograph, photograph. Add some of these to your business and enjoy a little more freedom in your schedule.