The digital age has created a myriad of alternatives for photographers to make money outside of traditional client work. The concept of “passive income” is the subject of hundreds of “financial gurus” on YouTube, and it is a popular goal for many families. Who doesn’t like to earn money without doing any “work?”
However, it is critical to emphasize from the start that there is no such thing as totally passive revenue in photography. Each opportunity demands preparation and upkeep for success, and anyone who claims otherwise is peddling a false fantasy. But with some effort and knowledge, passive income opportunities can provide a steady stream of income with less active involvement, diversifying your income and helping you earn more.
In this article, we’ll focus more specifically on ideas for passive income in photography.
As a successful photographer, should you consider diversifying your income? Even if you’re doing well in your career, relying on a single source of income is perilous. A sudden illness, life upheavals, or another worldwide epidemic can disrupt everything.
Allow yourself to pivot when life throws you a curveball. Future-proof your firm by leveraging your abilities across different revenue streams. A passive income side hustle can also provide a creative outlet where you can be yourself without having to cater to the demands of clients. With that considered, here are seven alternatives for passive income in photography.
Teach a Course or Start a Community
Sharing your knowledge and expertise online is a great way to create a stream of passive income. Platforms like Udemy, Skillshare, Kajabi and Coursera allow you to create and sell courses on topics you are well-versed in. Once your course is created and published, you can earn money each time someone purchases it, watches it or subscribes to it.
A word of caution though, this is quite challenging. Due to the unprecedented number of content creators and the vast amount of top-notch content available for free on YouTube, the oversaturated market necessitates that you effectively teach a unique skill set and foster the community. This will take time and can quickly become a full-time job.
Sell Prints Online
One of the best ways to add passive income to your photography business is to sell prints of your client’s work to the guests of your events. Online galleries such as Pixieset and Smugmug streamline the process so that order fulfillment is automatic and handled by a third party. This lets you earn money from your prints without the need for active involvement in the printing and shipping process.
While you will have to come up with a strategy that works for you, here are a few tips:
- Ensure that purchasing is enabled in your galleries.
- Ask your couple to share the gallery with their family and friends. Consider adding incentives or bonuses if they do so.
- Consider passing out cards to guests with a QR code to collect their email and send them a notification when the images are ready.
- Cull and curate the images so that you’re only showing the best of the best and so that you’re eliminating the duplicates. A great image can get lost in a sea of repeats and below-average shots. To help you cull, consider using a tool like Narrative Select, but be sure to take the time and manually scan the final selections as well.
- Send email reminders during the holidays with special promotions on prints.
Sell Presets and Other Workflow Tools
Many photographers and content creators are willing to pay for tools that will help streamline their workflow and enhance their images. Selling editing tools such as Lightroom presets, Photoshop actions, or other tools to run a photography business, such as email templates or contracts, can be a great way to generate passive income.
In terms of presets, this is exactly what we have done for years with our Visual Flow Presets. However, just like with education, the market is very saturated and competitive. So if you decide to pursue this route, make sure you’re offering something unique and be prepared for a lot of work.
Start a Blog for Affiliate and Sponsorship Revenue
Starting a blog on photography or a related niche allows you to share your knowledge and passion while also generating income through affiliate marketing. By recommending products or services you trust and use yourself, and including affiliate links in your blog posts, you can earn a commission each time someone makes a purchase through your link.
Here are a few affiliate programs to consider:
- Amazon affiliates
- Adorama’s affiliate program
- B&H’s affiliate program
- Affiliate programs for software such as Lightroom, Skylum, Shootproof, Honeybook, and more
- Affiliate programs for your favorite lighting gear such as Magmod or Westcott
- More! Search your favorite brand plus the words “affiliate program” to see if they offer something
Sell Stock Photography
Although the popularity and profitability of stock photography have been affected by platforms like Pexels and Unsplash, it is still an option for generating some passive income. By uploading your images to stock photography websites like Shutterstock, Adobe Stock, or Alamy, you can earn money each time someone purchases a license to use one of your images.
Start a YouTube Channel
Starting a YouTube channel is another way to share your knowledge and passion for photography while generating income. By creating and publishing videos on topics of interest to photographers, and monetizing your channel through ads and affiliate marketing, you can earn money each time someone watches one of your videos.
Read Also: Automating Your Finances: How to Turn Your Job Into Passive
What can you expect? In the photography niche, you can usually expect to receive $2-$5 for every thousand views directly from YouTube. From there, you can leverage the audience to land sponsorships with major brands, which will pay a wide range of rates depending on your audience and engagement numbers.
Start a Related Business
You may have other creative outlets that you can lean into to diversify your photography income. You could find a way to express your brand and reach a broader audience through unconventional methods. There are obvious photo-related accessories like postcards or zines, but think outside the box – the sky’s the limit. We’ve seen photographers go on to launch successful marketing agencies, tech platforms and more!
For example, married couple Chris and Ruth naturally progressed into an unrelated side business – making hats. In an interview, they told the story of how they always wore hats when shooting weddings, and people started associating that with their brand. Over the years, they bought a lot of hats and decided they wanted to create a better product, so they did. Now, they have a side hustle selling straw and felt hats.
Making a living as a photographer requires success in a competitive and uncertain market. By diversifying your photography revenue, you can increase your earnings while also enhancing your professional life and opening up new avenues for your creativity to grow. We hope you discover the motivation to advance your photography career for a long and prosperous future.
Generating passive income as a photographer takes some initial effort to establish, but with little imagination and persistence, it is feasible to generate many streams of income that require little ongoing effort. By investigating the choices outlined above and determining what works best for you, you may build a more steady and diverse income as a photographer.
The Best Photo Selling Websites
Although your own website is the greatest way to sell images online, there are numerous other sites where you may offer your photography for sale.
1. Adobe Stock
Adobe Stock is a stock photo site from the makers of the most popular photo editing software, including Photoshop and Lightroom. This photography eCommerce platform has been around for almost 20 years. It’s known to be among the very first online photo-selling marketplaces and is still considered one of the best stock photo websites to sell images on.
Adobe Stock is integrated with the Adobe Cloud Platform, which makes it particularly popular among photographers since you can upload albums directly from Lightroom. Moreover, Adobe has numerous products that are widely used around the world, which means your uploaded images have the potential to be seen by quite a large audience.
Check out more of the features that make Adobe Stock one of the best ways to make money selling photos:
- Supports a wide variety of assets including images, vector graphics, illustrations, and stock videos.
- Doesn’t require exclusive rights to your images, so you can sell on other platforms at the same time.
- Offers free access to Adobe Portfolio for contributors, which allows you to build a portfolio and showcase your best work.
All in all, Adobe Stock is an excellent choice for selling your photos online. It’s easy to use, free to sign up, offers great workflow integration, and provides huge reach to millions of buyers.
Pricing/Payout: Free signup. Contributors receive a 33% royalty share on images.
2. Shutterstock
Similar to Adobe Stock, Shutterstock has been a popular website to sell photos on ever since these types of platforms were invented. They have over 600 million images, videos, and music tracks and around 200 million contributors. That means they also have millions of purchasing customers.
Signing up for Shutterstock is free, and once you become a site contributor, you’ll start earning money every time someone purchases and downloads your content. Here are a few of the features that make it a great place to sell your stock images:
- Supports a wide variety of files including images, vector graphics, illustrations, and video.
- Doesn’t require exclusive selling rights to your images, so you can sell on other platforms at the same time.
- You can earn extra money by referring other photographers or artists to Shutterstock.
- Provides a personalized portfolio page and the ability to track earnings.
One thing to note about Shutterstock is that the competition is steep. As one of the largest stock photo and video sites on the internet, buyers have millions of images to choose from, including royalty-free ones. That said, you can still sell photos on Shutterstock and make good money in the long run if you focus on uploading a lot of images.
Pricing/Payout: Free signup and 6 separate earnings levels, ranging from 15% to 40% of the purchase price. The more downloads you get, the more money you earn.
3. Alamy
Alamy is a British photography site that’s another great website to sell photos on. It offers fast and easy signup, an iPhone app (Stockimo) to capture and upload photos on the go, and competitive earnings – over $1 million paid to contributors every month.
Alamy handles all of the complicated licensing that comes with online selling and provides photographers with a straightforward contract. The platform doesn’t edit submissions, so you can be sure you have complete control over your work.
Signing up with Alamy is free, and it’s an especially great option for students. That’s because students receive a special 100% commission rate for 2 years! Here are a few of the features that make it one of the best websites to sell photos online:
- Supports a variety of assets including images, vector graphics, illustrations, and video.
- Analytics tools to track sales and help you see what type of photos sell best.
- Doesn’t require exclusive selling rights to your images, so you can sell on other platforms at the same time.
Although this photo-selling site may not have as many buyers as Shutterstock or Adobe Stock, it’s still a great contender for extra revenue. It’s also an excellent choice for students due to its 100% commission rate for 2 years.
Pricing/Payout: Free signup and three commission levels. Most contributors receive 40%, which requires you to meet a threshold of $250 or more in gross sales every year. Contributors who earn more than $25k in gross sales earn 50% commission.
4. Etsy
Etsy is best known as a marketplace to buy and sell handmade goods, custom products, vintage clothes, and more. So, you may be surprised to see it on our list of the top photo-selling websites. But, Etsy boasts millions of users every month and many photographers use it to sell their work.
The great thing about Etsy is that they have a larger audience than most stock photography sites and a specific demographic that you can cater to. Sellers often make money from images that target crafty young females.
Another big plus is that Etsy operates as your own eCommerce shop. Of course, you can sell digital images, but you can also sell prints or other items featuring your photography such as mugs or blankets to expand your photography business! Check out the pros of making money selling photos on Etsy:
- You can price your own photos and products, which provides high earnings potential.
- Full control over how you display your photos to buyers.
- Offers an Offsite Ads program where the platform will automatically advertise your products across the web (15% fee on sales for the service).
Just remember, if you’re selling prints or other items, you’ll have to handle manufacturing and factor in the cost of printing, packing, and shipping. If you want to create an online store to sell your photography but don’t want to make your own site, Etsy could be a great fit.
Pricing/Payout: You can sign up for free or pay a monthly fee of $10 for more perks. Etsy charges a listing fee (the first 40 are free, then $0.20 each), a transaction fee (6.5% of the sale price), and a processing fee if you choose to receive payments through the platform (3% + $0.25).
5. SmugMug
SmugMug is a well-known photo storage platform that allows you to protect, store, and share digital photos. However, it also offers a sales platform where you can sell photo prints and digital downloads. They claim the setup process only takes 15 minutes!
One of the cool things about SmugMug is that they partner with various print labs, so you can sell traditional prints or products. Images can be printed on just about anything including metal, glass, and keepsakes. Check out more of SmugMug’s features:
- Private galleries and client-friendly tools for proofing.
- Custom pricelists.
- Unlimited photo storage including managing RAW files.
- Pre-built website templates and personal event sites.
SmugMug is another reputable choice for photographers, and it’s particularly well-suited to users who want to provide more extensive product prints without having to deal with all the manufacturing details themselves. It’s also handy for photographers who need a robust storage solution.
Pricing/Payout: To access the selling features, plans start at $28 per month and contributors keep 85% of their profits.
What Kind of Photos Sell the Most?
Large enterprises, small businesses, graphic designers, marketers, and other entities purchase custom or stock photographs for internet use. Bloggers and website owners who run small to medium-sized enterprises are the leading buyers of stock pictures.
Here are some of the most common sorts of images they purchase:
- People: Pictures of people of all ages are very popular. Currently, photos that feature people from different countries and cultures, active elderly citizens, and models who have imperfections and look more like regular people are high sellers.
- People working: These images are very popular with businesses. Folks working on laptops, writing, speaking at a meeting, etc. Just don’t make them so generic that they become a meme.
- Food: Various types of food photography, the stages of cooking, and even empty unwashed plates.
- DIY & Tools: Photos of DIY artwork, crafts, and home projects are popular as well as images of tools such as gears, hammers, nuts, bolts, and screws, which can convey a lot of things for potential buyers.
- Cities: Cityscapes, buildings, people commuting, and photos that show city motion and lights are very popular.
- Nature: This is a no-brainer. The beautiful outdoors never gets old to shoot and never goes out of style with buyers.
- Travel: Landscape photos for sale and shots from around the world are always in high demand.