Hobbies that can actually make you money 1-Photography

Hobbies that can actually make you money

1-Photography

If the photos that you are taking gravitate more toward art, it’s entirely possible that you’ll be able to make some money with this hobby. There are several ways to monetize photography. There are a number of major websites, such as Flickr and Shutterstock that provide photos to various users across the web.

You can earn some money by setting up an account on those sites, and adding your photos to sell to potential clients. Still another way is to market your work directly to actual clients.

Professional photographers are quite expensive, so you may be able to sell your services as a discount alternative for people who need photos for graduations, weddings and other events. As you gain more experience, and clients, you can raise your rates and increase your income.

Secrets to being successful as a photographer

1. Purchase Your Equipment

The first thing you need to do is invest in good equipment, so you can be confident in your ability to perform your job.

An up-to-date camera, lenses, and a flash are the main pieces of equipment that you’ll need to start your freelance photography business.

You may also need reflectors, diffusers and lights.

Out of all of these pieces of equipment, good lenses are the most important. So once you start making some income, spend some of money to purchase new lenses.

2. Set Up Your Website

As a freelance photographer, you’ll need a professional photography website to show off your work and help you spread the word about your photography business.

But your website can be more than just a portfolio. You can also use your website to communicate with clients, schedule sessions, manage your orders, and even deliver your completed work.

The best place to start is with a WordPress site and a good photography template.

Create a good website with a daily blog

Your website is going to be your most important ally. It is what most people will look at when considering you for a job and so your effort and/or money should be invested here.  

Make sure it is easy to navigate and in HTML (NO FLASH!).  Keep in mind that you are only as good as your worst photo, so don’t just throw up every photo that you think looks decent.  Sometimes less is more.  

If you don’t have enough content, create some!  Set up shoots with friends or seek out aspiring models that are willing to work in exchange for photos.  As long as the finished product looks great, your clients don’t have to know that these weren’t paying jobs.  After all, it’s your ability as a photographer that counts, right?

Set up a daily blog. Update it every day with a photo, religiously.  You can take Sundays or the full weekends off.  

The effect of a daily blog is wide ranging.  Unfortunately, when you start a freelance photography business, the one thing that often goes out the door is actually taking pictures.

You focus so much on getting jobs and doing them well that you forget to actually shoot for yourself. A daily blog will keep you doing this, shooting things that you love, and it will help you improve on a daily basis.

It will also add a personality to your website and help to steadily build a community of people who are interested in your work.

3. Build Your Portfolio

Every freelance photographer needs a strong portfolio in order to attract clients. When you are first starting out, we recommend doing some work for free to build your portfolio.

You can also find local models that need portraits for their modeling portfolio, and that way you both benefit. Once you’ve done some free work, you’ll need to display it on your website. Check out the Envira Gallery Albums Addon to add a stunning portfolio to your website.

4. Get Your First Clients

There are many online platforms for photographers to get traction and clients, such as Pinterest, imgur.com, and blogging.

Create a blog and write regularly to attract new clients. A blog also helps your website visitors to become clients by teaching them about your work and helping them to trust you as a professional.

It’s also a good idea to keep in touch with existing clients on a regular basis by keeping them updated via an email newsletter. A strong network can help you get repeat clients, and additional work through referrals.

MailChimp is a good free email newsletter tool for photographers. 

OptinMonster is for adding beautiful email signup forms to your website.

5. Create a Schedule

The ‘romantic’ ideal of the semi-deranged writer spending coffee fueled nights churning out those magical pages. That is a tough lifestyle to succeed on. You will have much more energy and get much more done if you keep the same early schedule every day.

Once you start getting a steady flow of clients, you will have a lot of tasks to complete each day, and it’s important to have a detailed schedule.

Use the BirchPress Scheduler WordPress plugin on your website to take appointments and show your availability to clients.

With BirchPress, you can also manage your clients, services, your calendar and more from inside your WordPress dashboard:

6. Edit Before Delivery

The best way to become successful as a freelance photographer is to produce such amazing work for your clients that they can’t help but rave about you.

To do that, you should always edit and enhance your photos before delivering them to your clients. This editing may include a background adjustment, color balancing, fixing insufficient light and enhancing skin tones.

7. Manage Your Finances

When you work for someone else your salary is guaranteed. So becoming a freelance photographer and suddenly being in charge of your own salary can be a bit scary.

But if you do a good job managing the income and expenses for your photography business, you can eliminate a lot of that fear.

Keep your personal/household expenses separate from your business expenses, and paying yourself a certain salary. That way, you will know exactly how much money you have left over to invest in your business, and you won’t be tempted to make those purchases out-of-pocket.

8. Attend Workshops

Attend a local photography workshop. Continuing education is important for freelance photographers because it helps you to raise the bar for yourself and renew your passion for your work.

9. Boost Your Confidence

You can do it. It’s not easy, but believing in yourself is the most important tool to keep yourself going. Put yourself out there. You will screw up sometimes, but screwing up is a good thing. It means that you are learning. Just try not to make the same mistakes twice.

And keep in mind that the work you do during the tough times is what makes the good times happen.

You should be confident in your photography skills: you are a professional photographer. If you are going to be successful as a freelancer, you need to show potential clients that you can confidently deliver the work they need.

Take experience from multiple shoots. Note what worked and what didn’t work in different situations. The more experience you get, the more you will hone in on your skills. You will become a more confident photographer with every step.

10.  Respond to emails and phone calls as fast as you can

If you are contacted by someone looking for your services, chances are that they just spent the time to look at your work, liked it and now you are fresh in their mind. Every second that you wait dissipates this freshness. Get the dialogue going quickly and the person will often not look elsewhere.

11.  Keep lists!

Lists are so important. Big goals are reached not at once, but through series of small tasks, in list form. With freelancing there is always so much random stuff to keep up with, often stuff you don’t feel like doing.

Having these things in a list makes them tangible and keeps them fresh in your mind. And the rewarding feeling of crossing these things off is necessary to keep from procrastinating on the less urgent tasks.  

Be a paper list person. Have paper scraps of lists. Find teuxdeux.com.  It’s so simple but oh so perfect, a weekly list that you can access from any computer.  It will vastly improve your life.  Try it out.  Set your homepage to it.

12.  Set up specific web surfing times for the day

Try to set aside specific times to surf the web. If you have particular trouble with certain websites, there are ways to block these websites on your computer (you can find out how by Google.)  Block them every morning and then unblock them at night.

13.  Low energy days and the 15 minute nap

Sometimes having a boss looking over your shoulder can be a good thing.  Retouching skin for hours on end can make your eyes droopy and have you feeling like shoving a screwdriver into your brain.  All those dreaded tasks piling up, just mocking you from your list.

Being fast is so important. It is a skill that is really built up over time, as you gain more experience.  Lightroom can change your life.  

If you don’t use it already, it will be the best money you’ve ever spent.  

Really learn how to use the entire program and learn the keyboard shortcuts as well. Keyboard shortcuts are amazing!

14. If you try to be all things to all people, you will fail. 

Find your specialty, your niche, that one thing that you love photographing more than anything else, and focus on becoming the best you can be at that.

15. Invest more in lenses, less on lighting. 

 Know your market and the amount of competition in your area.