As I am building my own photography business I have been looking at possible revenue streams to help earn a living from photography. There are quite a lot of possible revenue streams and this list is the first part of all of the income streams that I have been able to find. I’m not recommending you pursue all of them for your photography business nor am I suggesting that I am pursuing all of them. This is just some of the information that I have managed to glean together as I research possible business models. 

These revenue streams can be applied to any genre of photography, but it will be up to you to figure out how to organise them into your business plan. To be honest, when I started my photography business I had a few ideas of how I was hoping to earn a living but the execution takes time and dedication and a lot of investment before any of these streams come to fruition. 

Some successful photographers are able to rely on one of these streams as their principal income source but many, including myself, would recommend that you diversify and use multiple possible sources of income. By diversifying and selecting several revenue streams, if one of them has a dry spell and you are unable to earn from it (think of guided sessions during a pandemic) then the other sources of income can keep you afloat until it’s possible for you to re-engage that faltering stream. 

Under each of the items in the list there will be a little information about what it takes to curate that resource into a reliable source of income. 

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Part one 

Part one is concerned with how you can earn an income from other companies or individuals by selling your images to be used for a specific purpose. There are 4 income streams in this list and they include: commissions, licensing, press and magazines. Technically speaking press and magazine work is a type of image licensing where you are granting the right of publication of your images for a specific purpose, but they are typically pursued in another manner to normal licensing, so I separated them. Part Two is concerned with the products of a photographer and education and Part Three is concerned with modern revenue streams. 

Commissions 

Commissions are when a particular company or individual hires you to take pictures. Once the most stable sources of income for all photographers but in the modern age the rate of commissions has dropped significantly because there is a wide availability of images through stock websites that will largely fulfil the needs of companies that 40 years ago would have hired a photographer to take. However, this is still a valuable source of income for certain genres of photography (listed below) and it is the holy grail of landscape and travel photographers. 

This is particularly well suited ti: 

• Portrait photographers - portrait photography would largely be non-existent without commissions, which can be anything from company headshots and actor headshots, to family portraiture and even pet portraiture.

• Architectural photographers - Architectural photographers are often commissioned to produce images for architectural companies, newly built buildings, real estate agents, etc.

• Event photographers - this can cover anything and everything were someone wants memories of a given day, this could be weddings, graduations, birthdays, dances, award ceremonies, etc.

• Fashion photographers - can be hired by a particular company to produce images of a new fashion line or to capture images at a particular event

• Food photographers - they can be hired by restaurants or chefs to produce images for websites or recipe books

• Product photographers - produces images of a companies products for their website, catalogue, marketing campaigns, etc.

• Travel/Landscape photographers - commissions come from tourist boards or companies to produce images of their destinations, this is a rare thing now but it can still happen with any luck

Other types of photography are typically freelance photographers and instead of being commissioned by an entity to produce a set of images, they will often produce the images themselves and then try to sell them after the fact. But that doesn’t mean that commissions are impossible to receive. If you are incredibly lucky or very good at what you do, then some companies may hire you for specific projects.

To cultivate this as a revenue source you need to build a portfolio of amazing images for your genre. You should try and build relationships with the people that are most likely to require your services, for example if you are a food photographer hand your business card out to all of your local cafes with some examples of your work, research their social media presence, and offer a custom pricing package based on their size. There’s no point offering expensive services to a company that can barely cover their own expenses. Be realistic about their needs and try not to give away too much for free, otherwise you will not be cultivating a commission and would instead be devaluing your work. 

Image Licensing and Stock Photography

As mentioned above, commissioned photography projects are becoming are rarity thanks to the advent of stock photography. It used to be the case that a photographer would be commissioned for a particular project, with the leftover images they would then sell them to a stock agency who would license the images on their behalf to book producers, magazines, business packaging, etc. But now there are more images being produced every day than produced in the first 100 years of photography. There has been a massive boom in photography as a hobby, and an evil genius figured out they could sell those stock images through websites, and as more and more images became available, the price of stock photography plummeted. 

This is great for website builders, designers, business men, etc. But it has hurt the photographic industry. Companies no longer need to hire a photographer for specific images, instead they can search online and pay a couple dollars to use an image indefinitely and wherever they wish, and now there are even companies offering images for free. This has cut away the principle source of income for photographers and it’s why it has become increasingly difficult to make a living as a photographer.

This all means that the income from images licenses has dropped significantly, but if you have enough images that are in demand then it can contribute to your overall income. Not a lot, but the name of this game is to have as many possible sources of income as you can effectively manage. All genres of photography can be used for stock images because all companies require images, no matter what. 

One of the problems a photographer hoping to earn from stock photography has is that competition is very strong as there are more and more photographers, amateur and professional, uploading to stock websites, and you have to be really savvy about keywords, as that’s how your images would be found. Often the person looking for stock images are not photographically inclined and so they will choose the one that best suites their purpose rather than the best image. 

Due to these challenges I’ve recently signed up to a stock distribution company called Wirestock (that’s a referral link and if you follow it, I will earn a commission for referring you). They have already built a presence on the stock photography websites, I upload my images to their site, someone adds them to their stock libraries including all of the tags and descriptions, and when one of my images sells, we split the commission: they receive 15% and I receive 85% of the fees paid for the use of my image. It makes less work for me in most cases and I can put images that are just sitting on my hard drive to good use. I’ll write an update about my experiences with them at some point, but in the meantime I will continue to upload images to their site and see if I can earn some income from their services.

Press and Editorial 

Newspapers need a lot of content, they are constantly publishing around the world, so there are hundreds of daily newspapers. They also require online content to fill their websites and to keep them relevant. Obviously certain genres of photography, such as sports, documentary, war, photojournalism, etc. are the best suited for earning a regular source of income from press photography but that doesn’t mean that it cannot be a valuable little bonus to other genres. 

The thing with press photography is that any photography has a chance of being published if it tells a story, or if it’s dramatic, cute, or funny.

I’ve had 3 images/image packets taken up by the press so far. The first was a very bad image of an osprey, but it had a satellite tracker attached and I thought that might be newsworthy, it turns out the Herald newspaper in Scotland thought so too. The next image I had published was of a pine marten kit jumping over its sibling, very cute, in the Herald again. And lastly I had that pine marten kit packet published on the Aberdeen Press and Journal. Nothing particularly spectacular, not a national paper but a valuable little bonus to a set of images that otherwise might not have earned anything. 

To build this as an income stream you have to be producing good quality images and getting them out there regularly. If landscape is your game then images of weather, bright colourful and of interesting places are particularly publishable. For wildlife images, they need to have a little bit extra, harsh weather conditions, amazing light, funny or dramatic, and odd event, etc. The idea is for the paper editor to say ‘wow, I want to see that, my readers will appreciate that’. 

To get images published in papers you are best off using a media manager, I have a contract with SWNS. A good media manager will have relationships with all of the papers in your area, and even some international ones, and they will produce a press release of your images with some information about you and the circumstances of the images. They will then put out an announcement and the papers will decide whether or not to publish your images. If your images are picked up by a national paper or a few regional papers, it can be an incredible bonus for that month. And if you can consistently produce images worthy of the papers it can become a valuable revenue stream. 

Magazines and Articles

One of my photography acquaintances has had to up their magazine work to make ends meet thanks to the pandemic. His normal revenue streams dried up all of a sudden and so he had to expand his magazine work. I asked for some advice about how to get into the magazine market and he gave me some valuable advice. This advice not only applies to magazine work but can also be applied to online publications and blogs that pay freelance writers. 

Magazines typically want a complete package, not only stunning imagery, but a complete written article ready to publish. Each magazine or website will have specific genres and tastes for their written content. There is no point pitching an article about climbing a mountain to a wedding magazine, so be sure to familiarise yourself with what the magazine typically publishes. Magazines also have a particular voice to their written content and it is a good idea to practice writing in that style. 

So, if you haven’t figured it out yet, then you need to have incredible writing skills as well as photography skills to get work from magazines. 

When researching possible publications try to find the editor’s email address or find their typical method of submitting an idea. They will not want a complete article already written, instead keep the initial message succinct with a list of ideas for articles. If any of your ideas pique their interest they will get back in contact with you, but if for any reason they don’t get back to you, then assume those ideas weren’t well received. But just because the first time didn’t work, doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t try again. And I don’t mean email them everyday for 3 months because you will just annoy them, but try and make regular contact with new ideas every now and again, and eventually you may get their attention. They are incredibly busy people and they receive emails like that all the time. 

So not only does your idea for an article have to stand out but also the imagery that is to accompany it, after all you are not a writer but a photographer. 

Once you have your foot in the door and the editor has given you the benefit of the doubt, you should try and keep giving them article ideas. To make this into a regular source of income you need to supply ideas regularly and build a relationship with the editor. 

Remember these ideas are for both magazines and websites. Websites typically offer a lower rate of commission but they require a lot of content, especially the big websites that have thousands of articles. So, don’t be afraid to try multiple editors, websites and magazines because as long as you are able to produce new content for them that hasn’t been published elsewhere then eventually you will build a relationship for regular work. 

Conclusion 

These are 4 ways that you can earn some income through company relations. All 4 of these are incredibly competitive to get into and establish a strong revenue stream but they can be very rewarding. 

Some of these revenue streams are better suited for one particular genre of photography over another simply because that genre of photography is in more demand and more particular to a company’s needs.

Image licensing can be useful as a passive income source, in other words you set up your accounts once, upload the images once, add the keywords once, and then it can continue to generate an income for you endlessly. But it’s dependent on the images being in demand. 

Commissions are becoming rarer but hopefully as company’s require new imagery consistently, they will soon turn back to creating bespoke imagery that stands out from the crowds. 

Press and magazines can be difficult to create a steady revenue stream but it can be a valuable bonus to work that you would normally be conducting anyway. For example, if you would be hiking in the mountains taking pictures anyway, then why not consider selling the story to a magazine. It can be very competitive and difficult at first to build relationships, but once you have started it can become a regular source of income. 

In Part Two I will be examining the possible income sources from products and education. 

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Written by Daniel Long

Daniel Long created DRL Photography as a place to showcase his work as a photographer. Daniel has learnt a lot about photography and wishes to impart this knowledge with you, although the world is an ever changing place and he always says “you can never learn everything.” So as he makes his way, he continues to learn knew techniques, skills and information about photography. He focuses on Landscape and Wildlife photography and Daniel has a special focus on Scotland, his home away from home. As well as writing about photography and taking pictures out in the field, Daniel offers guided photography days so he can share his knowledge and locations in an effort to give his clients the best opportunities possible. Have a browse around this website to see his images, guided experiences and articles about photography. If you have any questions don’t hesitate to get in contact.