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How to Become a Freelance Photographer and Make Huge Amounts of Money [Detailed Guide]

by Fahad Saleem

Freelancing and being your own boss is the zeitgeist of the modern working dynamics. It is the future of work. According to the statistic more than 15 million people work as independent contractors only in the US. A majority of these people are creative workers including photographers, designers, writers, painters. We come across exciting stories of people daily on social media who earn millions of dollars through photography. Do you wonder how you can make money photography from your home? This post lists all the methods and ways you can earn money by photography. You can be you own boss, work from anywhere you want and sell your masterpieces to people around the world.

Make Money Photography

Learn the Best Photography Techniques to Master the Art

First things first. Learn Freelance photography and do it good. Know your stuff and be excellent in it. I guess if you are reading this post, you might be a learned photographer, but if you are a beginner, the best way to learn professional photography to make money is by doing proper courses online. Some of the best courses are offered by Lynda and Lifehacker. You can also learn Nikon DSLR professional photography with this amazing Udemy course.

You MUST have your own blog or website

If you don’t have a website or blog of yourself, it’s a huge deal-breaker. You have got to make your own blog where you can put all your best work. Make an exciting, beautiful and creative blog. It should have simple yet funny and intriguing design objects. You can check best photography design inspiration websites to get ideas. Update your blog regularly and put your best work out there. You can use a free online website builder to get the job done.

If you are too lazy to build a website, you can make a Tumblr blog.

Portfolio Websites

SmugMug

 SmugMug is a good website to showcase your photography work online. This website is extremely famous among photographers. It is designed to make your photos look awesome.

smugmug

 

Pixpa 

Pixpa is an all-in-one website builder platform for photographers, artists and creatives to create and manage their professional portfolio websites, client galleries, blogs and ecommerce stores – all in one place. Pixpa enables creatives to showcase, share and sell online easily without any coding knowledge.

Pixpa’s beautiful and mobile-friendly templates are fully-customisable and are a great starting point to create a professional website. Using Pixpa’s drag-and-drop website builders, creatives can easily build their website the way they want without any coding knowledge.

Select a Niche

You must stop just clicking everything you come across your way. Pick a niche, channelize your resources and master the areas that pay well. Some of the best paying niches in photography businesses are:

  • Hotels
  • Real estate
  • Weddings
  • Events

Hotels are a great market for making money photography. More than eighty percent of the income of famous hotels around the world come through the internet. If a hotel does not have an attractive image of it on the web, people won’t consider it. You can start offering random hotels on the internet to picture their buildings in the best way possible. This has great results.

Image: bransonphotography

Image: bransonphotography

Research with Persistence, Make Lists and Start Calling

Market research with tenacity and consistency is the key. Here’s a hard fact: people don’t love to pay for photographs. You have to create a market. Just search extensively for the hotels, event planners in your area and make a list. List is necessary. When you have a list, sit down and start making calls or sending emails.

Excellent trick: You can actually take the best photos of hotels and send them and show them that they could use these photos on their website. This would get their attention and they would certainly reply you.

Adobe Lightroom for Speed

You must have the best tools to increase the speed of your work. The best tool to get your work done in less time is Adobe Lightroom. You can provide quality services using the right tools.

Selling Photos Online

One of the best ways to make money photography is to sell your photos to big photos agencies. These agencies sell amazing photographs to media outlets and companies by purchasing them from independent photographers or agencies. Some examples are Corbis and iStock Photos.

These agencies pay you a fixed percentage on your photos ( if they sell). You need to submit your best photos to these agencies. If they like it, they will give you money. But not all photos sell. You need to be creative.

This is a screenshot of the earnings report from a famous photographer who has shared his methods of earning money by freelance photography on Youtube. This shows that you can earn a lot of money from photography. This report is only for the 50 photos that were sold. They more you put effort, the better money you get.

make money freelance photographer 1

Use the True Potential of Social Media to Make Money

You must be present on all the social media outlets like Flickr, 500PX, Instagram, Facebook. You should use the Facebook ads feature to attract attention. Post regularly the best photos on Instagram. Instagram could really get you new customers. You can also use eBay to sell your photos.

Contact magazines

In the start of the career, you have to get attention. If you have the right attention, deals and business will come along naturally. You should contact all the local and international magazines with your impeccable work and offer them to be their ful ltime or part time photographer.

License your Flickr Photos

You can license your images on Flickr via Getty so that people who want them could pay you. This is a great source to get nominal monthly income. Click this link to license your Flickr photos.

These are some of the way to make money photography. You can become a freelance photographer and earn money doing what you love. If you need further assistance or detailed information about anything mentioned in the post, feel free to comment on this post.

Images: wanderlust

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