21 Ways to Make Money as a Landscape Photographer
21 ways to make money as a landscape photographer
DISCLOSURE: I may earn a small commission from some of the links below. For the benefit of the doubt, please assume all links might be affiliate links. I only recommend products and services I use or have used in the past.
Landscape photography is a notoriously competitive and difficult niche to make a living in.
As a landscape photographer, it pays to be flexible and diversify your income stream, there’s certainly no reason to limit yourself to selling just prints.
My day job before becoming interested in landscape photography was as a digital business coach working with business owners from all over the world.
I quickly recognised that people can sell:
Their time
Their products (or other people’s products), and
Their knowledge
Ideally all 3!
And photographers are no different.
In this post, you’ll find an in-depth breakdown of 21 of the best ways to make money as a landscape photographer.
Check it out:
CONTENTS
(click to jump to the section, or keep on scrollin’ … it’s looong!)
1. Sell your prints online (the right way)
Show me a landscape photographer who DOESN’T sell prints?
Okay, so there is Peter McKinnon.
Peter McKinnon, landscape photographer, makes $2m a year, sells zero prints.
Not surprisingly, this is a huge revenue stream for most landscape photographers.
It’s easy to sell the odd print online, but much more difficult to make a living from it.
How it works
Selling online is both an art and a science.
Anyone can set up a website with a shop these days, put some prints on it and wait for customers to turn up, but that’s like printing a business card and never handing it out to anyone!
Anyone can put together a good looking website these days 😆
In my other career as a tech and digital marketing coach, I’ve seen people spend thousands on website design over the years - sweating every detail like colour shade changes and tweaks to fonts - only to leave it at that and then wait for customers to turn up!
Another name for this approach is ‘Hope Marketing’ - hoping customers will discover them.
In the following sections, I’ll break down my top tips for selling your prints online.
Run regular campaigns
The secret to selling online therefore is not how good your website looks.
Obviously, it needs to be passable, but it’s much more to do with how many campaigns you run to drive potential customers (known as traffic) to it with a strong reason to BUY.
For example:
You might run an ad campaign on social media to promote a new collection of prints.
Or a photo book.
Or your latest photography course.
Whatever campaign you run, it needs three things:
A start date
An end date
A budget (even if it’s zero)
The benefit of running a campaign this way is you can go back and measure how it performed.
If you’ve got a large social media following then that definitely helps, but that’s not the complete answer either.
So what else do you need to sell online?
A sales funnel
The next thing you need to sell prints from your website is a sales funnel.
You can imagine a sales funnel as an inverted triangle, with high numbers of followers at the top representing your social media and social video (YouTube) followers.
Followed by an email list of potential leads in the middle.
And finally, a smaller number of customers at the bottom who purchase on your website.
A simple sales funnel process for generating new customers
The sales funnel is used to literally ‘funnel’ people all the way from the top on social media, to being a customer on your website.
The key steps of my online sales funnel are as follows:
Grow my social media follower base
Make offers to my social media followers to encourage the keenest to join my email list
Send sales messages to my email list with a reason to buy on my website
Of course, sometimes people go straight from social media to paying customers and that’s completely okay with me too!
But it’s worth remembering these facts:
Around 97% of your social media followers will never be customers.
© Heap - Search and social media channels by conversion rate
Not to mention:
A staggering 95% of people who visit your website will never return!
It pays to understand that not everyone is ready to buy from you yet.
Everyone is in a different part of the buyer’s journey - from just getting to know you, to being a fan, to being a customer.
And, email is STILL King for selling!
Figures show it’s nearly 40x more effective than either Facebook or Twitter.
Now let’s look at what you should put on your website.
Only put your best photographs on your website
There’s a tendency by some inexperienced photographers when they build their first website to pack it full of dozens of prints.
But, there are no prizes for volume!
Most photographers find that the majority of their sales come from just a few prints in each collection.
Limit your sales range to your best prints. and organise them into collections of 6-12 prints
In fact:
Many marketing studies have shown that the more options you give a customer, the less chance there is they will make a decision!
In general, people tend to judge your work based on your weakest piece, so cull, cull and cull more of your work until you only leave the very best to put up for sale.
Sadness doesn’t sell!
You’re not a photojournalist shooting gritty street and war scenes showing the misery of life.
Images that evoke the emotion of sadness have been proven to be shared (and purchased) much less than other activating emotions, like awe and wonder.
If possible, remove any prints that may evoke the feeling of sadness as they won’t usually perform well and may well bring down the appeal of your other prints.
Create a collection or two
People generally like to view things in context and within a specific theme.
The theme may be a place, an object, even a feeling.
Wherever possible, group your prints into collections of 6-12 items of a similar theme as it helps give them more sales appeal and you will sell more.
Collections are also easier to talk about and market in your campaigns than individual prints.
Not to mention:
You can do a ‘collection drop’ and to be honest that sounds pretty cool!
Your goal as a business owner
You already read that 95% of people who visit your website never return!
So, you’ve got to try to get the contact details of as many visitors as you can so you can market to them on your own terms.
Most people are super busy and super distracted, so they don’t necessarily leave your website because they hate your work, they leave because life gets in the way - parenting, work, chores … beer.
There are two ways you can get people’s details before they leave your website:
By installing retargeting (or remarketing) pixels from the social media and search giants on your website
By capturing their email in return for a small ‘bribe’ or offer you’ll make
Let’s quickly take a look at these two approaches.
Retargeting (or remarketing) pixels
Retargeting pixels are a piece of code (called a ‘pixel’, ‘tag’ or ‘script’ usually) from a social media website or search engine company.
You can pick up the code here Facebook/Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter, Google, Bing and add it to your website for free.
Once installed, the code tracks any visitors to your website that happen to be logged into one of the social media or search apps you have installed the code for.
© Replug article, how remarketing (or retargeting) works, here
The problem is:
You never get to see who visited your website with retargeting as the data is anonymous to you!
So how do you use it?
Thankfully, the social media or search platform keeps a tally of your visitors and allows you to later serve an ad to them when they return to their respective social media accounts.
You’ve probably visited a website yourself and then keep seeing an ad for that brand when you go back to Facebook, Instagram, other websites, etc. …? Yeah? Well, you’ve just been retargeted!
It has to be said, a minority of people find all this tracking a bit spooky and others even consider it a privacy invasion.
But the big benefit of retargeting to the website owner is that the only thing your website visitor needs to do is enable/agree to cookies on their browser when they first visit your website.
This, in turn, enables the pixel scripts from the social media companies to run and track them, so really, it’s up to each visitor.
As an aside:
Apple’s latest iPhone iOS 14.5 release has made retargeting potentially less effective as a new feature gives users the ability to turn off tracking altogether.
Facebook, especially, is furious, as they derive a substantial portion of revenue from this activity.
Give your visitors an irresistible offer
The second way to get your website visitors details is to make them an irresistible offer (also known as an ethical bribe) in return for their email address.
Here’s an example - sign up if you want? It’s real!
As we’ve already seen, figures show email marketing is nearly 40x more effective than either Facebook or Twitter.
So adding people to your email list should be your prime business objective, after straight sales.
On this website, I offer a free postcard to any visitor who signs up for my photography newsletter and my free business tips newsletter to anyone who wants to grow their landscape photography business.
Sure, it costs me to print and post the postcard to people, but at about £1 per email sign up, it’s worth the price to filter the keenest potential customers from my social media followers.
Of course, rather than a physical postcard, you could offer something digital instead like a set of free iPhone lock screen images, or computer screen wallpaper?
And don’t forget:
Once you have your email list you need to run your email marketing campaigns to give people a reason to buy your prints and other products. I’ll cover how to do that in a future blog post.
Turbocharge your sales with Referral and Affiliate programs
The final thing I want to cover with online sales is the use of referral and affiliate programs to boost your sales.
I use Peach’s on Squarespace because it has everything I need from e-commerce to email marketing all under the same roof.
Peach’s, awesome affiliate and referral software for Squarespace websites.
What’s the difference between a referral and an affiliate program?
Refer a friend and get £5 off your next purchase -> Referral program.
Share this link and get paid 30% commission on any sales done via it -> Affiliate program.
Think about using a referral program for your regular customers to refer their friends to your website for a small reward.
And an affiliate program for influencers or other businesses, for example, outlet’s like cafe’s, restaurants and bars where multiple people might purchase after clicking the affiliate link.
Peach’s provides both of these services.
Furthermore:
You can use an affiliate app in conjunction with a QR code and place your prints in various outlets, like bars, coffee shops and restaurants.
You can then agree on a commission payment to an outlet owner in return for using their walls to display your prints.
Attach a scannable QR code to each print, which, when scanned by someone with a mobile phone takes them straight to the product purchase page of your website for that print.
If the person then goes ahead and purchases the print, the affiliate software automatically tracks the amount and commission to be paid out to the outlet owner.
It’s a great revenue-generating model that helps both small businesses make the most of their vertical ‘real estate’ (aka walls) and gives the photographer some welcome exposure and sales at the same time :)
For a further boost, the outlet owner can also promote your work on their website and/or social media using the same affiliate links adding even more revenue-generating opportunities for both!
But … do I even need a traditional website these days?
Great question!
Short answer:
No
Longer answer:
But it helps!
Especially if you want to sell multiple items like prints, courses, digital products and workshops, to mention but a few, as covered in this blog post.
Saying that there are many options if you do want to go website’less.
For Example:
With cart checkout software like Thrivecart, where you can create and link checkout pages directly from your social media, bypassing the need for a website entirely.
SmugMug, a great option for storing and printing your photos on demand
And, there are also online image storage and print shops like SmugMug who will take orders from customers, print, pack and post them out without you even getting involved!
Selling directly from social media?
Finally, the future may be to sell your products straight from social media.
Currently, for most parts of the world, your shop on Instagram or Facebook passes clicks directly from your profile to the product page on your website for customers to buy from you.
However, in the US, Instagram has rolled out Checkout on Instagram allowing customers to buy products directly from your Instagram grid, reels and stories.
Checkout on Instagram, coming to a country near you soon.
That’s right, your customers don’t even have to leave Instagram to shop!
This method has pros and cons:
The pros are frictionless purchasing, in theory, leading to more sales.
The cons are higher than regular e-commerce checkout fees (5% currently) from Instagram.
And the more worrying:
You don’t get to own the client relationship as you do on your own website so building an email list is going to be a LOT harder.
Summary
This was a huge first item, I hope I didn’t put you off!
Not all of them are this long, I promise! Feel free to bookmark this post and come back to it anytime.
Let’s do a quick recap
Once you’ve got your website and sales funnel set up you can run campaigns to sell prints and make money whilst you sleep!
You don’t need a traditional website to take orders anymore - although personally, I would still recommend it for most photographers due to flexibility) - as an alternative, you can use a print service like SmugMug or a cart service like Thrivecart to accept to process orders
If you want to get other people to promote your own products and services (and you have a Squarespace website) you should sign up for Peach’s to manage your affiliate or referral programs - it’s quite literally a Peach of a program! (Peach’s only works with Squarespace, other websites will have different affiliate systems)
It’s a pandemic proof business model!
Further considerations
It helps to have a large social media following to seed the top of your sales funnel with followers, but if you don’t have a large following, you can also use ads to send people straight to your product purchase pages or carts to buy
If you rely 100% on your social media following and you get de-platformed, or the platform goes bust or changes its business model, your income stream could dry up unless you diversify
You should therefore strongly consider building an email list and market to that to truly maximise your profits
Most e-commerce websites require either a PayPal and/or Stripe account to take payments
Look out for Checkout on Instagram currently trialling in the US, it might be a game-changer, but there are some cons like customer relationship ownership and higher fees to process purchases
Instagram is also rolling out native affiliate links, so people can promote other peoples work directly from the platform and earn a commission.
2. Earn big money as an affiliate
You want to build another income stream for your photography business other than selling prints, but you don’t have any other products to sell.
What do you do?
Sell someone else’s products and services with affiliate marketing of course!
How it works
Affiliate marketing means signing up to promote another brands products.
And in this section, I’m going to introduce you to the holy trinity of affiliate programs!
For example, this:
A few of the items I promote on my Photography Resources page.
As a landscape photographer, you don’t have to be limited to just photographic equipment.
Why not consider also promoting items, like:
Outdoor clothing brands you might use like The North Face or Icebreaker
The services you use to run your business, like website hosting
Or even products you use for travel and finance
If you have a website blog with a lot of visitors or a large social media or YouTube following, affiliate marketing can be very profitable.
In fact:
People have built 6-figure (even 7-figure) businesses around affiliate marketing as the main income stream.
You might have noticed that I have a whole page, Photography Resources, dedicated to affiliate marketing and many of my blog posts have naturally placed affiliate links in order to help pay for the creation of the blog post.
How to set up affiliate links on your website
To earn an affiliate commission you need to do 3 things:
Sign up for the company you want to promote’s affiliate scheme (search “<brand name> affiliate scheme” on Google), and/or, join Skimlinks to benefit from their pre-agreed commission rates (Skimlinks is free to join but charge a 25% commission fee on your earnings via their links)
Place your affiliate links in (non-spammy) places, like blog posts, resources pages, social media and email links where they look and in fact are natural
Promote your links, or pages with links, on your social media and via your email list
Don’t forget:
In most countries, you must declare that you are promoting a brand for financial gain.
You can do this with a simple disclosure at the top of the web page, or on the social media post. Check your regional laws for exact requirements.
Each affiliate scheme has a different qualifying time period, called the cookie period or duration.
For example, Squarespace, the company I use for this website, pays up to $200 for anyone who signs up after clicking one of the affiliate links I have sprinkled liberally around my website (in a natural way!)
The Squarespace affiliate program
The cookie period is 45 days, which means if someone clicks one of my Squarespace affiliate links and signs up within 45 days, I get the $200 bounty!
Pretty good huh?
Affiliate marketing is a numbers game, the more eyeballs you can get on your content with the links, the more chance you have of earning affiliate commissions.
It’s worth noting that every affiliate scheme pays a different amount.
From a few per cent of the purchase price to a flat fee.
It can take time to sign up for multiple affiliate marketing schemes.
But what if you get rejected from a brands affiliate scheme?
Well, this does happen, especially if your website and content doesn’t reach the required standards.
In which case, an alternative is to use a solution called Skimlinks.
Skimlinks is an awesome affiliate tool you sign up to once and then collect fees from over 48k brands globally.
Skimlinks have already signed up to a mind-boggling 48k+ different merchant affiliate schemes from all over the world!
When you create a free account with them, they take a 25% commission from any earnings you make using their links.
I suggest you directly join the affiliate scheme of the main companies you are planning to promote (if they’ll accept you) so you get the full commission and sign up with Skimlinks for commissions on everything else.
As an aside:
When you sign up, Skimlinks also provides you with a super-awesome Chrome browser widget that you can install on your Chrome browser.
Go to any website, e.g. vimeo.com, and click the Skimlinks icon in the browser’s toolbar to find out detailed information about their affiliate scheme.
Activate it from the Chrome toolbar on any website and it will tell you if the company has an affiliate scheme and if so, what the terms are?
It’s MAGIC!
What other affiliate tools are there?
Two other affiliate tools I highly recommend to power your affiliate marketing revenue stream:
Geniuslink gives you localised affiliate links, especially useful for merchants like Amazon, which has an affiliate program per country.
Geniuslink allows you to localise Amazon affiliate links and better track clicks.
You sign up for an Amazon affiliate account in the countries you are interested in, say UK , USA , and Canada.
Then you add your Amazon affiliate id’s from those schemes to your Geniuslink account.
If someone clicks on your Geniuslink link to purchase an Amazon product on your website, Geniuslink automatically redirects them to the correct country’s affiliate program so you don’t lose out on commissions.
Geniuslink is a paid solution but only costs $5 a month for 2000 clicks per month and you can buy more clicks if you get really popular.
And, Geniuslink also integrates with Skimlinks!
The great news is that Geniuslink also integrates with Skimlinks, so if you haven’t signed up for an affiliate program and Skimlinks has, you will still get paid, minus the Skimlinks 25% commission.
Sadly Skimlinks doesn’t work with the Amazon affiliate scheme.
And finally:
KIT is another affiliate marketing tool that is super useful for photographers, you can think of it as a social media site for creators.
KIT is a great place to show off your kit recommendations, like this.
The way KIT works is that you can put together a range of products for a particular photography kit, for example, a Moon or Milky Way astrophotography kit.
If you’ve integrated your GeniusLink and Skimlinks accounts into KIT, then you are ready to start earning money from the products you add to your KIT kits.
And that concludes the Holy Trinity of affiliate programs!
What if you want to run your OWN Affiliate programs?
I already covered this in the “Selling your prints online” section above, so go check it out if you need a refresher.
In a nutshell, look at Peach’s if you have a Squarespace website, and Thrivecart if not.
A word of caution
No one wants to be spammed with affiliate links!
If you use affiliate links as part of your income, please use them naturally and in a context where you are providing value to the end-reader, for example, where you are sharing knowledge, like in this post!
Summary
Let’s do a quick recap
Use the Holy Trinity of affiliate marketing apps, Skimlinks, GeniusLink and KIT
If you can, sign up for some of the more profitable affiliate schemes directly and use Skimlinks for everything else
Disclose you are using affiliate links or getting paid to promote content on your website or social media post
When it all goes right, you can literally make money whilst you sleep just through people clicking on your links and then going ahead and buying the products and services you recommend
Affiliate marketing schemes are free to sign up to, so if you already have a website, just sign up to the affiliate schemes and create a 'resources' page with your links on to get going, you can copy my format if you’re not sure how to start?
Keep it natural and add value through in-depth content (like this) with your affiliate links, and definitely don’t spam people with hard sells
Conversely, if you want to set up your own affiliate scheme and have other people promote it for you, and have a Squarespace website, check out Peach’s affiliate and referral management system, it’s quite literally a peach!
Affiliate marketing is pretty much pandemic-proof!
Further considerations
Affiliate income can be erratic when you are starting out until you get enough website visits
You need a good marketing strategy to promote your work
In many parts of the world, you need to have a prominent disclosure statement on each web page where you post affiliate links saying you might earn a commission - that includes any social media promotions too
It can be difficult keeping tabs on all the different affiliate programs you’ve signed up for. Services like Skimlinks can help aggregate them all into one place for a fee.
3. Sell your work as an NFT
A WHAAAT!??
Ok, I hear you … time to get into this!
By the way:
NFTs are not for everyone, so skip this tip if you feel you are drowning in tech terms you don’t understand.
How it works
An NFT, or Non-Fungible Token, is a digital contract that represents a real-world object like a photograph, some music, a painting, computer game item, video, even lines of code.
The NFT is stored on an electronic ledger, called a Blockchain, and everyone is able to verify and agree exactly who owns that NFT by inspecting the Blockchain with certain software tools.
NFTs can be freely traded (bought and sold) by buyers and sellers and this information too is stored publicly on the Blockchain.
Artist Beeple’s recording breaking “EVERYDAYS: THE FIRST 5000 DAYS” NFT sold for a cool $69M
Owning an NFT does not necessarily mean you own the physical object, in fact, the default position for most NFTs is you don’t own the physical object if there even is one at all?
For example:
You could own the NFT of the Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci, issued by the Louvre Museum in Paris, but not own the actual original painting.
What makes the NFT of the Mona Lisa valuable is its providence and rarity.
Providence as in who the artist or organisation that issued the NFT was? Are they already renowned/famous?
Rarity in that the NFT was created as a 1 of 1 - although open and limited edition NFTs are all possible too with a corresponding reduction in value compared to a 1 of 1.
As a buyer, you have bragging rights to say you own the Mona Lisa NFT and prove it to anyone by simply directing them to the Blockchain entry whilst proudly displaying it in your carefully curated NFT gallery as a demonstration of what good taste you have!
If you bought the Mona Lisa NFT directly from the Louvre (I expect it would be pretty pricey if they ever auctioned a 1 of 1), then the Blockchain would record the Louvre as the initial owner, then you as the next owner.
Even if you sold your Mona Lisa NFT to someone else, you would still be recorded on the Blockchain ad infinitum, and the next person’s ownership would be imprinted on the Blockchain after yours and so on.
Providence and rarity ultimately add up to the NFTs value as most buyers are in the market looking to flip NFTs for a profit, because no one wants to spend hard cash on some worthless data, which, at its base, is all an NFT is.
Minting an NFT
The process of adding an NFT to the Blockchain is called minting.
Once minted, an NFT is unchangeable and tamper-proof.
There is no way to change ownership of the NFT on the Blockchain unless the current owner puts it up for sale (or gifts it away), usually in an online auction.
If you put your NFT up for sale on an auction site, people can bid on it and the winner will usually pay you in a crypto-currency called Ether (or ETH) although other Blockchains exist (see later).
Most of the bigger and well-known NFT exchanges run on the Ethereum Blockchain.
1 ETH is currently worth approximately $2000, but this figure will likely be radically higher or lower by the time you read this!
Ether is a digital currency just like the more well-known Bitcoin and is stored in digital form in a crypto-wallet, rather than as coins and notes as the so-called ‘fiat currency’ like regular dollars, euros or pounds are.
You can use your dollars, euros and pounds to buy Ether at a crypto-exchange like Coinbase, or trade them for other cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin (BTC).
In March 2021, NFTs got a huge boost when 3D artist, Beeple, sold one of his NFT works for an astonishing and record-breaking $69 million at Christie’s auction house!
If you’re still confused about what an NFT is, you can try reading this.
The BIG benefit of NFTs to photographers
One of the key benefits to photographers (and other creators) of selling your work as an NFT and the reason for the stampede by creators, is that you can set royalties, usually at around 10-15%, of the resale price of your NFT.
TryShowTime is a platform for showing off your NFT collection
What this means is whenever your NFT is resold in the secondary markets, i.e. someone bought it from you and then sold it on to someone else, you get a percentage of the sale as a royalty.
Sweeet!
Once you’ve set the royalty commission on your work, you will always get paid that commission whenever your original work is resold for as long as that Blockchain exists.
How to market and sell your NFTs
It has to be said that most artists and photographers struggle to sell their NFTs unless they already have a large, not to mention, crypto-savvy, social media following, or, are famous.
However:
If you have set your sights on selling an NFT and have neither of those qualities, you still have a shot!
The way to get noticed and sell your NFTs is via Twitter and by being part of the NFT community.
Now, I have to admit that Twitter is my personal least favourite social media platform!
But, having used it to explore NFTs recently it appears to be the place to be seen, not to mention, announce your latest NFT minting/auction to the world … or at least to other NFT artists and hopefully, the odd collector too.
The secret to success appears to be, and I have not tried this personally, but have observed:
Follow as many NFT creators, buyers and hashtags (#NFT, #NFTCommunity, etc.) as possible
Post on Twitter your own and repost other artists NFT minting/auction posts in order that they notice you and may one day reciprocate by reposting yours (this latter point is key to gaining social currency in the community)
This is especially useful if you’re new to selling NFTs as the hope is that one day, through the magic of the network effect of other people promoting your work, you will eventually reach an NFT collector, who might then decide to check you out and invest in your work.
What can you earn from selling your NFTs?
As previously mentioned, the great thing about Blockchain is it’s a public ledger system, so you can see exactly how much has been sold by an artist, for how much and to whom it’s been sold to?
So if you have a favourite photographer that you follow, you can look them up for yourself to see exactly what they’ve sold.
I conducted a study of landscape photographers selling NFTs on Foundation recently and calculated that for the 50 landscape photographers in my study, the average amount they made from NFTs was 7.834 ETH or approximately $16k (using a $2k / ETH conversion rate).
So it can be a useful second income stream if you have the reputation and the contacts to carry you.
Excellent! So is there a downside?
NFTs have generated a huge amount of FOMO (fear of missing out) in artists and photographers alike causing an understandable but at the same time blind stampede into the space to tap a new and exciting revenue stream.
However, it would be remiss of me not to mention that there is much debate around the impact of the high CO2 emissions caused by the buying and selling of Ethereum Blockchain-based PoW NFTs.
Where can I find more information on NFTs?
For the latest updates on NFTs for photographers, please check out my resources page and consider subscribing to my newsletter.
You might also be interested in my post on what landscape photographers earn selling NFTs.
DISCLOSURE:
I hold BTC, ETH and XTZ in varying quantities.
I have also minted 3 NFTs on OpenSea.io, but to date have not put any up for auction.
The lazy minting process emitted 4kg of carbon according to carbon.fyi.
Summary
Let’s do a quick recap
When you get it right, you can literally make money whilst you sleep by selling your work on an NFT auction!
Photographers get a royalty/commission (usually around 10—15%) of each subsequent resale of their work which automatically gets deducted from future sales and credited to their account
You can include a physical gift in an NFT if you want, for example, an actual photographic print like a limited edition, or 1 of 1. Not to mention you can include coupons for a course, mentorship sessions, tickets for an event, and so on, so NFTs can encapsulate real-world objects as well as digital ownership of a work
It's pandemic-proof! (in fact, it took off during the pandemic!)
Further considerations
To keep up to date subscribe to my newsletter and check my resources page for the latest NFT updates
You can calculate your ETH carbon emissions here by cutting and pasting your public NFT platform ETH address
Consider contributing to a carbon offset project if you are using PoW-based NFTs
Ethereum.org’s official line on their NFTs is here
It's the wild west digital frontier, no one knows whether NFTs will take off, or crash and burn?
NFT sales rely largely on your 'social currency', i.e how famous you already are, or how well you can network on social media like Twitter #NFTCommunity
On most Ethereum Blockchain platforms you'll have to pay ETH to mint your photos - on some platforms, like Foundation, this can be quite expensive (15% service fees).
OpenSea has a gas-free ‘lazy’ minting service which means you only pay when you put your work in the auction
You need a specialist crypto wallet like MetaMask to store your ETH, or Kukai for XTZ
You’ll need to exchange your cash e.g. dollars or pound sterling, into ETH or XTZ at a crypto exchange like Coinbase (this is not investment advice!)
Some platforms, like Foundation, are invite-only and it can be difficult to get an invite or voted in
With artists, filmmakers, and photographers alike all minting their back catalogs into NFTs there’s an awful lot of supply out there and few collectors!
4. Sell a photo subscription service
Ever considered selling a monthly (or you choose the time period) photo subscription service to your customers?
How it works
Imagine living in a big city like London or Birmingham but loving the coast or countryside and not being able to get there?
What’s the next best thing to being out in nature?
How about having 3 great prints delivered straight to your door every month from a local photographer showing the area you love change with the seasons!
Want 3 great prints delivered to your door each month?
Who’s going to provide it?
YOU (the photographer) of course.
Lockdown has made people hungry for nature, but even with lockdowns lifting across the Western world, many people are still couped up in big cities or towns, miles away from the kind of scenery they love.
You can implement this type of subscription using your Squarespace account (if you have one).
Just select Physical from the create a product menu in the Shop, then scroll down and select Subscription from the list of Customise options.
If you don’t have Squarespace, an alternative solution for cart and subscription processing is Thrivecart.
I’ve personally had an account with Thrivecart for years and they’ve faultlessly processed tens of thousands of pounds in subscription fees from my clients.
Benefits and drawbacks
Let’s do a quick recap
When you get it right, you can literally make money whilst you sleep!
It's a subscription model, what’s not to like?
Further considerations
You need a good marketing strategy/social media following and/or email list to promote your work
You better have 3 good prints per month to send out to your customers!
Subscription software is not free so there’s a financial investment to make whether you use Squarespace, Thrivecart or some other subscription software
You’ll need to sign up with a payment processor, like PayPal or Stripe to accept payments to your bank account
5. Earn money as an influencer
These days, if you have an engaged social media or social video following, you can leverage it as an influencer to promote another brand or their products.
How it works
This usually involves you creating some short-form content around the brand or its product for release on Instagram or YouTube.
The content might be in the form of photographs, or, more commonly these days, short-form videos like TikToks and Reels.
Do you know your worth as an influencer?
According to the 2020 Influencer Marketing Outlook report, the top 5 social media platforms for influencer marketing are:
Instagram (82%)
YouTube (41%)
TikTok (23%)
Twitter (23%)
Facebook (5%)
Increasingly these days, creators are approached directly through their social media channels to create content for a brand so if this happens to you, it pays to know what your time is worth?
Where am I in the Influencer pecking order?
You may be a photographer, but also dabbled in Instagram Reels or produced some TikToks that went down well?
If a brand is after short-form video content, like TikTok’s or Reels, it doesn’t expect to get perfect production value video.
In fact:
Perfection can sometimes go against the brand as it can look like an ad and everyone hates ads.
What a lot of brands really want is authentic (or at least authentic-looking) user-generated content (UGC) where the influencer showcases their product or service in a natural and entertaining way for the platform you are on and your target audience.
To start though, you need to know where you stand in the influencer pecking order because not all influencers are created equally.
For Instagram, these are the main influencer categories people tend to agree on:
© Influencer Marketing Hub, link
You can see this covers a wide range of people on their influencer journey.
From the smallest Nano-influencer with just 1,000 followers, which is easily achievable for any photographer, up to millions which are for the elite, even celebrity-level influencers.
What can I earn?
In terms of earnings, the average Instagram payment by a brand in 2021 according to the Influencer Marketing Hub is as follows:
Nano-influencers: $10–$100 per post
Micro-influencers: $100–$500 per post
Mid-tier influencers: $500–$5,000 per post
Macro-influencers: $5,000–$10,000 per post
Mega-influencers: $10,000+ per post
Celebrities: Varies, but $1+ million isn’t unheard of!
You can also check this page for other platform rates including YouTube, TikTok, Twitter and Facebook.
Rather than waiting for someone to contact you, there’re also a number of influencer websites you can sign up on.
These are like a ‘Google for Influencers’ directory of Influencers and sometimes the brands themselves.
You can check how your Instagram account looks (or anyone else’s for that matter) to the outside world by using a tool like Not Just Analytics.
Summary
Let’s do a quick recap
It’s paid work and may not take much time to create the content (but varies)
You get to build your business network
If you like working with the commissioning brand, you might be able to negotiate a regular content deal where you create content every week or month
Further considerations
You are selling your time and that takes time away from developing your own work and business
You might not believe in the product, brand or person that approaches you, leaving you with a moral or ethical dilemma as to whether to work with them?
Finding new commissions can be erratic unless you are well known or have regular clients
Never buy fake followers or engagement to boost your social profile stats! Brands can use tools like these to spot fake accounts!
6. Sell your work in a gallery and other outlets
You don’t need to limit your sales to your website and social media.
Depending on where you live, there are probably dozens of galleries, cafe’s, bars, restaurants and other outlets that would like to have your work on their walls.
Let’s see what works.
How it works
You need to take a different approach depending on whether you’re pitching to a gallery owner, or a bar, cafe, or restaurant owner - let’s call the latter outlets for now.
How to approach a gallery
Gallery owners can be a notoriously prickly bunch, especially if they are not artists themselves.
They generally live by the rule that if you have to approach them, they don’t want you, which makes it super difficult for new photographers to get a break.
We all inherit a low-level part of the brain that marketers frequently exploit called the ‘croc-brain’ which likes to chase things that we can’t have.
Gallery owners are no different, if anything, their croc-brain is even more highly developed than the average persons as they search for the rare and highly in demand for their gallery in order to just survive financially.
Irrespective of their background, a gallery owner is always looking to make the most of their ‘vertical real estate’, aka walls, on which they hang their own, and other artists work.
Every 2ft by 2ft section of gallery wall needs to be selling either cheap but fast-selling art, or, slow-selling but expensive art to earn its place on the wall.
And, if it doesn’t sell, it’s replaced by something more commercial.
As a photographer looking to get your photos into a gallery, you need to be aware of the galleries end customer.
Ask yourself this:
Are they selling to a hip and trendy market, or, a traditional customer?
Do they sell photography, or just paintings and ceramics?
Do they sell cheap, or expensive works?
If your work is not a good match with the gallery it’s time to walk away - you can’t convince a gallery owner to take on your work.
If you do get taken on, most galleries will offer to hang your work on a sale or return basis whereby you offer the gallery prints to hang on their wall for ‘free’ and hope they will sell them for you, or, if they don’t sell, return them.
Once sold, the gallery owner will settle up on a weekly or monthly basis as pre-agreed. Try not to give them too much credit as cash flow can be an issue for a small gallery and they might end up delaying payments further, or worst case, going bust.
Approaching bar’s, cafe’s and restaurants (aka outlets)
The model becomes more interesting when we’re talking about selling through outlets like bar’s, cafe’s and restaurants.
My personal approach with outlets is to offer them a selection of free prints to hang on their walls along with a QR code for each print.
Visitors to the outlet can scan the QR code and then checkout via my website.
The outlet owner will then be paid a commission via the affiliate link embedded in the QR code’s URL.
How to set up an affiliate scheme to sell your work via cafe’s, bars and restaurants using Squarespace and Peach’s.
It’s wise to pick outlets with a high footfall, especially if you’re going to be investing in free prints for their walls.
I’ve already written about this method in the “Selling your prints online” section previously so won’t repeat it all here, but the basic’s to set this up are as follows:
Sign up for an affiliate marketing solution like Peach’s if you’re using Squarespace - there is similar affiliate software for WordPress, Shopify, Wix and other websites if you use those
Sign up for a QR code generator service
Now go out and sign up your outlets, say a cafe, where you will hang your photos
Add them into your affiliate scheme so they can view their sales dashboard - this removes the element of trust required otherwise for payments as everything is recorded by a third party
Generate a unique affiliate link that takes customers who scan it to the product check out page
Embed that unique affiliate link into a QR code
Print out the QR code and place it next to your print in the cafe
That’s it!
Now you just have to wait for enough footfall before someone decides they want to buy!
Once you get the order via your website, you will need to print, post and pack it off to the customer.
Summary
Let’s do a quick recap
It’s money whilst you sleep as someone else is selling your prints!
You get free exposure and even if you don’t sell much, should get more people signing up to your social media and email lists
Further considerations
You are dependent on the gallery or outlet to sell your work
Running a gallery is expensive and gallery owners take a big cut, typically between 30% and 60% of the selling price
For outlets, you can offer them a 15% to 30% cut of anything bought from their walls
You might need to approach (and get rejected from) quite a few galleries before you find one that matches your style, but that’s just business
You'll probably need to supply to several galleries or outlets to make a good living from sales as they can be erratic
In a gallery, your competition is in close proximity, like on the wall next to your prints!
As we’ve seen, it’s not a pandemic-proof business model
7. Sell your work in a market
We’ve all been to markets, they are a bit like an exhibition except without the prestige factor!
How it works
You rent a booth at a market to sell your prints.
The market may be an annual, quarterly, monthly, weekly, even daily event.
Before you sign up for a booth at the market, go visit it and see how popular it is?
Try to get as much information as possible over and above the booth price.
For example, what kind of people are visiting?
Do they look wealthy, or is it a flea market attracting car boot sale bargin hunters?
Ensure you choose the right market for your brand.
Is it an all-year market you can rely on the income from, or just for the holiday season(s)?
What does the competition look like? Is there any?
Sometimes having no competition can work against you. If every other stall-holder is a street food stand and you’re the only photography stand, people may ignore you as they’re there for the food, not to buy prints.
Ask the market manager what the average ‘footfall’ is to the market and if they have any demographics about the visitors, for example, are the visitors mostly locals, or tourists?
Then ask yourself, are they my type of customer?
Weekly and daily markets tend to be locally organised during peak season, like over the summer months if you’re in a tourist hotspot and the bigger quarterly or annual markets tend to be more national, even international in nature and much more expensive and competitive to get a booth in.
The big benefit of a market is that people visit them with their cash or credit cards literally burning a hole in their pockets!
In short, people go to markets to buy stuff, so be ready to take their money.
Summary
Let’s do a quick recap
Established marketplaces attract buyers looking to buy
You meet lots of people and can promote your work and brand (even if they don’t all buy on the day)
You can hire someone else to sell your work if the market is popular and you know you can sell enough to cover their costs
Further considerations
A market pitch/booth can be costly
You will need to spend money on marketing materials to make your booth look good and get some business cards printed
You’ll need to spend time at the market, or hire someone to do it for you
You may incur travel and expenses
Competition is generally in the booth(s) right next door!
Not pandemic-proof!
8. Put on an exhibition (and boost your social currency)
You get invited to exhibit your photography in a solo or joint exhibition.
How it works
An exhibition is different from a market only in title and prestige.
Like markets, most exhibitions are put on in order to push product, that product being your prints.
Although there are people who visit exhibitions just to ‘appreciate the art’, what the person paying for the exhibition, whether that be you, a commercial gallery owner or a museum, always has an eye on the bottom line!
An exhibition can be very good for your reputation.
Apart from selling your work, the other main benefit of being part of an exhibition is it can be very good for your reputation.
In simple terms, it’s bragging rights to say you’ve had a solo (or been part of an) exhibition and the social currency it generates produces further loyalty and “word of mouth” virality for your brand by the visitors.
Exhibitions are great places to launch a new collection of work.
Launches have a start date, end date and a marketing budget (even if that marketing budget isn’t very much!).
Launches tap into several human psychological traits that marketers leverage to their advantage, including social proof, authority and a huge driver of buying activity, scarcity.
You can activate someones scarcity ‘gene’ in two ways:
You can make time scarce, i.e. the period the exhibition is on for where visitors can buy your work.
Or, you can make quantity scarce, i.e. only have a certain number of Limited Edition prints available to purchase.
The scarcity-wiring in our brain makes us want to ‘gather’ things before they go away.
This trait is genetically deep-rooted and likely kept us alive when we had to hunt and gather to survive.
In the modern age, this wiring tends to increase the amount of buying we do when we are confronted with a limited-time event like an exhibition as people know they can only buy the product for a certain time and/or for a certain price.
So exhibitions can be good for your bottom-line and your profile/brand.
Summary
Let’s do a quick recap
Exhibitions attract buyers looking to buy!
You meet lots of people and can promote your products and brand
You earn prestige value and bragging rights
Local arts media like to cover exhibitions so reach out to them for PR
Further considerations
Exhibitions can be costly to set up and market (unless someone else is picking up the tab)
You may incur lot’s of other expenses like travel costs depending on where the exhibition is
Exhibitions are usually a one-off event unless you are highly in demand
Exhibitions can have multiple exhibitors meaning your competition in close proximity
As we’ve seen recently, it’s not pandemic-proof!
9. Run a workshop or course (and turbocharge your earnings)
Another income-generating mainstay of established photographers is the photography course or workshop.
How it works
You advertise your course or workshop on social media or through your email list to find people interested in attending.
The course, or workshop (whatever you decide to call it), can be either in a building say if you are teaching skills like editing on the computer, on-location, say on the coast, or, a mixture of the two - for example, you spend a half-day inside teaching and then go out to shoot in the afternoon/evening.
Workshops are a great way to establish your authority as a professional photographer and pass on your knowledge to other aspiring photographers.
Cornwall based photographer, Ashley Hampson, provides a full range of photography services including highly sought after workshops.
You also get to meet and interact with interesting people, make friends, build your brand and hopefully cross-sell other products and services to them in the future!
A study by invesp showed that it can cost 5 times more to find a new customer than to sell to an existing one, so it pays to bear that in mind.
Important! Get your course RATED!
One other important aspect that a lot of photographers forget is to ask their customers for feedback at the end of the course and for them to leave a rating on a public rating site, like Google, Facebook, TripAdvisor, TrustPilot, etc.
Not only are ratings good for your SEO (Search Engine Optimisation), they are also a hugely important decision-making tool for a customer when buying online.
For example:
When you go to Amazon to buy some new kit, what’s the first thing you do?
That’s right, scroll to the bottom of the product page and read the reviews other people have left!
In marketing terms, ratings provide your brand with two important attributes:
The first is called social proof.
Although there are early adopter customers in every business niche, the majority of people don’t like to be the first at something, the reason being that if it’s a scam or disaster, they will have wasted their time, money, or both.
Past reviews show that you’ve done this before so that means the social proof gets a box tick by the potential buyer.
The second important attribute you get with ratings is called authority, something we’ve already talked a bit about in the other sections.
It’s common knowledge that people listen to and follow the advice of authority figures.
With a good set of ratings, you can prove you’re an authority figure in your particular niche of photography.
Not to mention:
You can use ratings in your marketing material, on your website and in your social media to attract other people to your courses and offerings.
It’s extremely unlikely someone will give you less than a 4-star review if you've just spent a whole day or more together teaching them unless it was a huge and impersonal class size.
In fact, most people will either give you a 5 (or very high 4), or not rate you at all.
Summary
Let’s do a quick recap
You can earn in a few days with a workshop what you might earn in a month selling prints
You get to meet people and this helps you understand their problems and how you can help solve them
Don’t forget to ask for feedback at the end of the course!
Claim or set up profiles on review sites, like TrustPilot, Google my Business, your Facebook page, etc. and ask your attendees to leave you a public rating and review which you can use later in your marketing materials
When you share knowledge you instantly become an authority figure in the process and boost your profile
You can cross-sell other products and services because people like to buy from other people, especially people they trust
Further considerations
You need a good marketing strategy to get people to sign up, especially the first few times until you get established
There may be costs to hire a venue and kit if you’re running it indoors
Weather conditions may affect what your attendees can shoot and the results they get - you need to manage expectations!
You have a duty of care to your attendees especially if you are going outdoors into nature and will need suitable insurance and follow all the relevant health & safety laws in the country you run the course
You will need to complete risk assessments for each different location you visit and for more remote locations, have a medical evacuation (medivac) plan in the event someone gets injured
It’s not a pandemic-proof income stream, but is a lot of fun!
10. Run a photo tour adventure (and get paid to see the world)
Run a photo tour for a group of customers to a photogenic part of the world like Iceland, Lofoten or even further afield!
How it works
It’s like running a course or workshop, but just on a much bigger scale!
You become the tour leader and take your customers to the most photogenic locations in the world.
Needless to say, you need to have fully recc’ed your tour location beforehand, in some cases, where language and specialist knowledge are required, you might also need to hire a local guide.
© Capture the Atlas run stunning photo tours to the most incredible places on Earth.
As someone who has trained as an expedition leader myself, I can tell you that the logistic’s of organising a photo tour should not be underestimated!
From risk assessments, insurance, medical supplies, accommodation, transport, rations (if you’re going off-grid), to power supplies to charge camera batteries and spare kit, as the leader, you have to be meticulous in your planning!
The safety of your customers has to be your number one concern, especially if you’re in a less-developed country than the one you are used to living in.
You need to maintain a list of emergency services contact numbers and availability and have a workable Medivac (medical evacuation) procedure.
If visiting locations experiencing political unrest or where bribery and corruption is rampant, you should also consider taking a HEAT (Hostile Environment Awareness Training) course.
Also consult your government’s Foreign Travel Advice service if it has one (if not, use the UK’s).
Logistics aside, photo tours can be one of the most rewarding experiences you can give to your customers, not to mention yourself!
As per a workshop, don’t forget to ask for feedback and ratings, see Considerations below for more details.
Summary
Let’s do a quick recap
You can charge good rates and make enough from one photo tour as you can from several months of other income!
You get to travel to the most amazing and photogenic places on Earth and meet new people
You share knowledge and become an authority
You build trust with your customers and can cross-sell other products and services in the future
Further considerations
You need a good marketing strategy to find customers and get them to sign-up
Logistics planning needs to be meticulous you can’t afford to forget anything!
You may need to find, hire and manage local guides
Weather conditions can never be guaranteed and may affect what your attendees can shoot - you need to be experienced managing expectations!
You're away from home a lot (especially difficult if you have a family)
As the leader, everything is on you, from safety to getting the perfect shots, it can be quite pressured
It’s expensive to get a photo tour business off the ground unless you already live in the location you are running the photo tour in or have prior investment
Planning and organising takes a lot of time and effort which will take away time you have for other projects
Some parts of the world are politically and sometimes even geologically unstable! Ensure you and your customers are equipped with the skills to deal with any issues which might arise
Claim or set up profiles on review sites, like TrustPilot, Google my Business, your Facebook page, etc. and ask your customers to leave you public ratings and reviews which you can use later in your marketing materials
The business model is not pandemic-proof as we’ve seen recently!
11. Mentor another photographer (and become an authority in your field)
Helping someone develop new skills is one of the most rewarding things you can do in any aspect of life and most coaches and mentors are seen in high regard by their customers.
How it works
You mentor a new photographer in an aspect of photography to help them improve their skills.
You can offer mentoring in person, via video link (Zoom/Skype), even via chat or email.
To be an effective mentor you need to have worked through the common issues people experience to some sort of resolution.
Being a mentor is valuable to both the mentor and mentee (customer). Photo by NeONBRAND.
You don’t have to be fantastically successful to be a mentor, but you do need to share insights about what you tried and be honest about what did and didn’t work for you.
It can help if you have an educational background or some formal training in education (like an adult education certificate) so you can understand the different ways people learn; visual, auditory, reading/writing and kinesthetic (i.e. by doing).
Mentoring sessions usually take place on a weekly, bi-weekly or monthly basis, and the mentee (the person being mentored) usually pays in advance for a fixed number of sessions, for instance, 6.
Individual sessions can last from half an hour to several hours in length depending on what has been agreed and the mentor usually sets some sort of task to do in-between sessions and progress tracked.
Summary
Let’s do a quick recap
Upfront payment for the duration of the mentoring period
You can charge good rates
You get to meet interesting and motivated people
You share knowledge and see someone develop
You can be mentoring multiple customers over the same time period
You can run the mentoring online over Zoom or Skype
You can cross-sell your other products and services as well as extending the sessions
It’s pandemic-proof!
Further considerations
Finding people to mentor can be difficult you need a good marketing strategy
It helps to be more established with a good reputation and experience
It can be time-consuming if you are mentoring multiple customers
You might have a time clash with the perfect weather conditions when you need to be out photographing!
12. Run an online masterclass (and scale your photography coaching business)
An online masterclass group is like 1-to-1 mentoring but instead of mentoring a single person at a time, you mentor a group of people in an online class. It’s like a regular virtual college class for photographers.
How it works
There are times when it makes sense to coach people in groups rather than 1:1.
For example:
Maybe you have a group of people who can’t afford your 1:1 mentoring service? Like students or recent graduates.
Or, there are a bunch of people who all want to learn the same thing and you don’t have the time to see them all individually.
In these instances, you can offer to run a masterclass group coaching session online.
A masterclass can be a productive way of educating groups of all sizes. Photo by Chris Montgomery.
Just like 1-to-1 mentoring, a masterclass is usually paid for upfront in a block booking, say 6 or 10 sessions or as required.
Masterclass sessions may take a little longer than 1-to-1 mentoring sessions as you will need to spend time answering questions from multiple people and therefore the pace may be a little slower.
The masterclass format can offer cost benefits to clients, help build a mutual community with other attendees and provide a way for you to scale up your coaching business.
Summary
Let’s do a quick recap
Upfront income from the masterclass
You can cross-sell your other products and services as well as extending the sessions
You can charge good rates and it is more scalable than just taking on more 1:1 clients
You get to meet interesting and motivated people
You share knowledge and see the class develop
You can run multiple masterclasses
You run the masterclass online so no travel time and expense costs
It’s pandemic-proof!
Further considerations
The masterclass format might not suit everyone, some people like to be private
Finding people to mentor can be difficult you need a good marketing strategy
It helps to be more established with a good reputation and experience
It can be time-consuming if you are running multiple masterclasses!
13. Get another job
A lot of the options in this post might be things you’ve never heard of, or at least never tried, so let’s not leave out the most obvious too.
Many landscape photographers have different full time jobs, like being wedding photographers or lecturers.
How it works
You know how it works, somebody pays you to do a job!
Some people do other jobs to help fund their passion for landscape photography. Photo by Rene Asmussen.
It might be as a photography teacher or lecturer at a school, college or university.
Or a wedding photographer.
Or you might work for a large brand that constantly churns out new content.
Or as a more established photographers apprentice or assistant.
Summary
Let’s do a quick recap
It’s paid work to keep a roof over your head and you (and maybe your family too)
You work with and meet interesting people (hopefully!)
Depending on what you do, it can be pandemic proof!
Further considerations
Work can get boring or tedious especially if you're doing the same thing over and over
If you get fired or made redundant, your main source of income is wiped out
It takes time away from developing your own skills and other revenue streams
14. Get published! (and become an ‘author’ity)
Becoming an author is one of the surest ways of people seeing you as an authority on a topic.
How it works
Many options here:
Approach a publisher, like fotoVue
Self-publish a book, or ebook on Amazon
Write for a blog or brand online
With new free content flowing onto the Internet at a rate of over 5 million blogs published per day, you’d have thought that the market for paid content would be non-existent.
However:
These days, free content is usually just the search engine ‘bait’ (ahem) to get people to spend money on other things like courses, workshops, or prints.
That being said, there are still some publications that will pay you to write and for those that don’t, there’s always the free publicity that publishing a ‘guest post’ on a more established brand’s website brings you.
Not to forget, there’s also the option to write your own book or ebook!
Yes, it may sound daunting, but these days, self-publishing is all the rage on Amazon (think Kindle) and there are online courses you can do to help you through the process.
If you can’t get (or don’t want) a publisher, self-publishing might be the way to go.
Writing a book or ebook doesn’t just have to be about the money.
The word ‘author’ is the root of the word ‘author’ity for a reason, and mainly because the general public hold authors in very high regard.
Even if you don’t become a New York Times bestseller, trust me, a book is the ultimate business card and you can use it for giveaways on your social media and at events.
Self-publishing tips:
The first tip is to get a literary professional to proofread and/or edit your book before you publish.
You can buy the services of editors on Fiverr and through other more specialist companies.
Proofreading rates start at a reasonable £3 ($4.50) per 500 words.
The second tip is to get a professional graphic designer to create the book cover.
Once again, Fiverr is a great place to get this done, ideally someone with experience in book covers.
The third tip is to come up with a catchy book title and subtitle.
No matter how good your book content is, if the book cover and title sucks, people will never pick it up and get to the valuable content.
The fourth and final tip is to get your book reviewed on Amazon.
Do everything you can to encourage reviews within Amazon’s terms of use.
Summary
Let’s do a quick recap
Write a book, become an ‘author’ity!
Anyone can self-publish these days and a book is the ultimate business card even if it’s not a best-seller!
If you’re not ready to write a book, try blogging - guest blogging can improve your profile and get a backlink to your website (which improves your websites search-engine ranking)
Writing is pandemic-proof!
Further considerations
Writing a book is not usually a way to make money fast, unless you are already well known and have a large following
Writing can take a lot of effort to create something valuable, even writing a blog post takes practice
Employ the services of a proof reader, graphic designer (for the book cover) and come up with a catchy title to sell your book
15. Become a product ambassador, or reseller
Once you get to a certain number of followers on social media, companies will approach you (and you can approach them) to promote their products in shoutouts or ads in your content as an influencer.
How it works
The next level on from influencer is to secure deeper relationships with product manufacturers (sometimes known as OEMs, or Original Equipment Manufacturers) in your niche and apply to become a product ambassador or even a product reseller if you have the capacity.
For example:
Take Paul Wilson, aka Astro Daddy, aka one of the worlds leading astrophotographers based in New Zealand.
He is Australia Ambassador for the Sky-Watcher Star Adventurer 2i, a type of star tracker used by astrophotographers to track the starts and get pin-sharp shots of the night sky.
He has listed the Sky-Watcher on his website and is authorised to sell it from there.
Check out Paul’s website where you can buy the Sky-Watcher Pro as well as some freaking awesome prints!
As mentioned in the introduction, product ambassador opportunities are not open to everyone, you have to be outstanding in your field and have an engaged social media profiles to qualify, but it’s worth aiming for.
However, becoming a reseller usually requires less ‘fame’.
Resellers usually have to buy products upfront at wholesale prices from the manufacturer.
As this is ‘cash in the pocket’ to the manufacturer, they are usually way more lenient in who they sign up as there is little risk to them.
There are two types of reseller:
A distributor who supplies all the smaller retail outlets in a particular geographic area. Note that a distributor may also be the manufacturer, as well as a retail outlet!
And, the actual retailers themselves, selling to the end consumer from a store, physical or online.
Ambassador roles are better for the more established photographer looking for a new income source as all the logistics and fulfilment are usually taken care of.
Whereas a reseller usually stocks a number of products, not just one, requiring a warehouse, logistics contracts and supporting staff.
Summary
Let’s do a quick recap
Ambassadors (usually) make money whilst they sleep as the logistics and shipping are taken care of by the manufacturer
Ambassadors and resellers take a cut of sales revenues from anything they sell
As an ambassador it pays to think out of the box, you can promote a wide range of products from photographic equipment to outdoor clothing to website platforms, so don’t limit your options!
It helps secure your position as an authority in your field when brands get behind you, especially when they promote you too
Resellers require fully fledged businesses including warehousing, logistics and supporting staff
It’s pandemic-proof providing your suppliers are not affected!
Further considerations
You need to be already be someone in your field and have an engaged follower base to become an ambassador
Resellers usually have to buy stock upfront at wholesale prices, requiring cash flow
You need a good marketing strategy/social media following and/or email list to shift product
As resellers, sometimes you can be competing with your supplier if they have their own retail operation
Erratic income, especially at the beginning
16. Sell your photos on stock image websites
Selling photos for use as stock has been a staple for many photographers for years, here’s how it works.
How it works
There are many stock photo sites that you can upload your photos to and earn a revenue share when they are used by end-users of the stock websites.
Stock photo by Eric Welch, on Unsplash
Examples of paid-for stock websites are:
And, there are also free stock sites that give exposure to photographers, like:
Making money from stock is really a numbers game.
You need to upload lots of photos to lots of stock sites, which can become somewhat laborious!
In terms of earnings, it varies by stock site, so check the small print.
For example:
Adobe Stock, you can expect to earn between $0.33 per photo and up to $70 per uploaded video.
To help with the upload process there are apps like this which you can use to upload the image once and have it distribute that image to a number of different stock sites to save time and effort.
You can use tools like Photerloo to help automate the image upload process to the main stock sites.
Summary
Let’s do a quick recap
Real passive income opportunities to make money whilst you sleep for those who are consistent!
It’s pandemic proof!
Further considerations
Erratic income, especially initially
Can be time-consuming work uploading to multiple stock websites
You need to shoot for what the market wants, but this may not be what you want to shoot!
It’s a numbers game, you need to upload hundreds, if not thousands of images to make a good passive income and that takes time so play for the longer game.
17. Earn YouTube ad revenue from AdSense
You create how-to photography videos and monetise your content through YouTube’s ad’s using AdSense.
How it works
Ok, let me first state that making money from YouTube takes time, usually, a lot of time.
Not to mention:
You really need to be a dedicated content creator to succeed.
You make money from YouTube by people watching the ads at the start, during and at the end of the videos you upload to YouTube.
The system that keeps track of what you’ve earned is called AdSense and is owned by Google, which also happens to own YouTube (just in case you’ve been living in a cave the last 15 years and didn’t know that).
How much do YouTubers make? © Influencer Marketing Hub
The good news is that for those that do stick with YouTube and build a following, there’s a stream of passive income to be earned.
Here’s a breakdown of the key numbers:
Google pays out 68% of their AdSense revenue to the video creator and keeps 32% for themselves
The average advertiser pays $0.18 per view
On average, 15% of viewers watch the requisite 30 seconds of a video ad
So, if your video gets 1000 views, 150 (15%) will watch the ad for 30 seconds.
That means the advertiser(s) would get charged, on average = 150 x $0.18 = $27 (£19) per 1000 views
That $27 is then carved up into $18 for you the video creator.
And, $9 for Google (32% of $27).
You have to remember that these figures are averages and the amount each advertiser pays will depend on a number of different factors, meaning different creators can and will earn different amounts to this based on a number of factors.
Now:
For most people, $18 (£13) is not going to make a material difference to your standard of living, so you really need a channel with multiple thousands of subscribers eager for your next video to drop in order to get consistent earnings.
For example:
If you had 100,000 channel subscribers and dropped 2 video’s per week and 50% of them watched your video's (that’s 100k views per week), you could earn:
Your per week earnings:
$18 x (100,000 / 1000) = $1800 (£1285) per week in AdSense revenues
Your per month earnings:
Or, a very respectable $7200 (£5100) a month, just from YouTube ads.
This isn’t easy to achieve, but some photographers do get there, eventually.
Which photographers are smashing it?
Someone who is smashing it as a landscape photographer is Thomas Heaton with 471k subscribers to his YouTube channel:
Thomas Heaton, super popular landscape photographer and outdoorsy type YouTube person
To calculate their rough AdSense earnings:
Take any YouTuber’s video views
Divide the number of views by 1000 then
Multiply that figure by $18 (£13)
Don’t forget, these are average figures and different creators will earn different amounts.
How to set up your YouTube channel for monetisation
Rather than me repeat what’s already been written a thousand times, I’ll refer you to the vidIQ (YouTube analysis tool) website, who have produced an in-depth guide on how to set up your YouTube channel for monetisation.
SPOILER ALERT!!
Before you can monetise, you need:
1,000 subscribers on your YouTube channel
Your videos must have generated 4,000 Watch Time hours over the last 12 months.
AdSense isn’t the only way to make money from YouTube!
The most important thing to remember is that AdSense revenue isn’t the only way to make money from YouTube!
Creators regularly posted affiliate links to products and services in their video descriptions.
They also get paid to promote products in-video.
And, promote their Patreon accounts, digital products, masterclass sign-ups and more …!
Yep, YouTube is a veritable gold mine for the business-savvy landscape photographer.
Alyn Wallace’s story
If you want a heart-felt inside look into how top astrophotographer Alyn Wallace quit his job to become a full time astrophotographer, watch this video!
You can’t help but feel compassion for Alyn and the journey he’s been on!
Alyn Wallace on how he quit his regular job to become a full time astrophotographer
FINAL POINT:
YouTubers don’t make any money from AdSense if you skip the ads on their channel!
So, next time you’re watching your favourite content creator on YouTube for free, you might want to let the odd ad run to 30 seconds so they get paid a little!
Summary
Let’s do a quick recap
Real passive income opportunities to make money whilst you sleep!
Don’t limit yourself to just AdSense, a true YouTuber also makes money from affiliate links, Patreon, digital product sales, promote masterclasses, sponsorships and more!
vidIQ have a great blog and useful tool for studying YouTube analytics (there’s a free account too)
YouTube is pandemic proof, in fact people watch more YouTube in a pandemic!
If you do a good job, you will be seen as an authority, even a celeb at the top-most levels
Further considerations
Erratic income to start
You need a good marketing strategy, ideally an existing social media following and/or email list to promote and seed your YouTube channel
It takes a lot of time and talent to create valuable YouTube content
You need 1000 subscribers and 4000 watch time hours over the past 12 months to even start monetising through AdSense!
It's super competitive!
18. Get patrons on Patreon
In times past, artists used to get ‘patronages’ from wealthy individuals to allow the artist to do what they loved doing.
Even Leonardo da Vinci had patrons, like the wealthy Medici’s, who supported him financially.
These days, you can still get patronages and you don’t even have to be connected to the super-rich to benefit from them.
How it works
Patreon is an app that lets your most passionate fans support your creative work via a monthly membership.
You give your fans access to exclusive content, community, and insight into your creative process.
In exchange, you get the freedom to do creative work and the stability you need to build an independent creative business.
For example:
Welsh YouTube astrophotographer, Ayn Wallace (again!), has his own Patreon account, offering 3-tiers of membership, starting at just £3/month.
Check out Alyn’s Patreon account
Each membership tier has different benefits depending on the price you pay.
It’s completely up to you as the creator how many membership tiers you have, what you offer in each tier and how much they cost?
However:
Many members back creators like Alyn not because they demand something in return for their monthly membership fee, but because they appreciate all the content he produces, most of it being completely free!
As of writing, Alyn had 229 patrons, which, like any subscription model helps provide a foundation to cover expenses each month and reduces the income fluctuations from other more erratic income streams.
Summary
Let’s do a quick recap
Patreon is just another form of monthly subscription, so you make money whilst you sleep!
You decide how to reward your patrons and how much each tier costs
You can offer different reward levels for different patron's, for example, by providing exclusive content, products, or even workshops or meet ups
Patreon processes all the payments for you (charges between 5% - 12% plus payment processing)
It’s pandemic proof!
Further considerations
You need real fans who love what you do and are willing to pay to support you!
It will take time to build up your membership unless you are already produces great content
One study suggested that only the top 2% of Patreon creators make more than $25k a year
19. Expand your range of merchandise (and become a mini-Amazon)
Selling your prints online is only the start.
Your photographs are beautiful and in high demand, so why not print them as cards, on mugs, mouse mats, hoodies, jigsaws, etc., etc., etc.?
How it works
Printing on mugs, t-shirts and other apparel requires specialist printers and so is not something you can do at home.
Having said that, there are dozens of merch printing services you can hook up to, some more automated than others.
If you use a Print on Demand (POD) service rather than bulk printing and warehousing, it’ll not only make your cash flow slicker but your business more eco-friendly, as waste is eliminated.
If you have a Squarespace website you can use Printful to sell a wide range of products from clothing to home and living accessories, you just need to enable it from the Commerce menu and set up an account.
There are a range of Print on Demand (PoD) services your website can hook up to.
If you're using another e-commerce system like Shopify or Woocommerce, Printful also integrates right into that too.
The good news is that if you take a fully integrated POD service, there’s literally nothing more to do than to choose the products you want to sell and link them to your Squarespace (or other) website with a few clicks.
The list of things you can sell is astonishing and growing all the time:
A selection of the merchandise you can sell from your website using Printful’s PoD service.
Summary
Let’s do a quick recap
A tried and tested make money whilst you sleep scheme!
The POD company takes care of everything from printing to delivery, you just need to promote and advertise
You don’t have to hold any inventory, nor pay any fees until a product is sold to the customer
There’s no investment to make and you are creating a whole new sales channel
Printful integrates into many e-commerce systems, including Squarespace, Shopify, Woocommerce and dozens more!
It's pandemic-proof!
Further considerations
Erratic income to begin with
Helps to have a large social media following and/or email list to promote to
You need to have a good marketing strategy to get eyeballs on your new products
Look for seamless integration of the POD service provider into your website, the last thing you want to be doing is batch ordering products and posting them out yourself!
20. Sell your own digital products
Selling your own digital products online are one of the most lucrative things you can do as each sale is virtually ALL PROFIT!
Typically, photographers sell LUTs (or Profiles in Lightroom), but the scope of digital products is only limited by your imagination.
How it works
If you’re a landscape photographer you’re probably used to applying LUTs (aka Look Up Tables) as a way to colour grade your photos or videos and give them a unique look and feel?
Heck, you might have even bought some from your favourite photographer?
Michael Shainblaum
Daniel Kordan
Even Peter McKinnon from back in the day!
The reason why these world-class photographers and others sell their own LUTs is because it’s soo DAMNED PROFITABLE!
Creating a LUT is super easy too if you have Photoshop, see video:
Create Your Own Amazing LUT Profiles in Photoshop
Alternatively, you can use the services of an app like Lutify.me to create your own LUTs.
If you need a helping hand to create your LUTs check out Lutify.me
Once created, you can add your LUT to your website for sale as a Digital Download with just a few clicks, here’s how to do it on Squarespace:
Squarespace and other e-commerce platforms allow you to upload your digital products with a few clicks
All that leaves is to market your digital products via your website, email list and social media!
Summary
Let’s do a quick recap
A tried and tested make money whilst you sleep scheme!
Cheap to set up and you don’t need to hold any physical inventory as the product is digital!
Apart from a few per cent paid to your payment processor, digital products are puuure profit!
LUTs are easy to create and add as a digital download to sell directly from your website store whether that be Squarespace, Shopify, or others
Check out Lutify.me for a LUT creator and LUT library
It's pandemic-proof!
Further considerations
Erratic income when you are starting out
You need a good marketing strategy / social media following and/or email list to promote your work
If you’re confused about the difference between Presets and LUTs (Profiles in Lightroom) check this
21. Sell your own online course (and earn money from your expert knowledge)
And finally!
I think this is one of the most overlooked income streams for photographers in any niche.
Transform your experience and know-how into a thriving knowledge business.
How it works
Your course can be on any topic connected with photography:
Planning and shooting
Editing
The business of photography (this blog!)
Timelapses
Astrophotography
Seascapes
The list goes on …
Subscription models are all the rage right now
Don’t be limited to a one-off sale either.
The smartest businesses take a little less upfront in return for a monthly or annual subscription from their customers.
In fact, businesses with repeatable subscriptions are generally considered more valuable than non-subscription businesses because they have a more stable and predictable cash flow.
Because there’s nothing worse than wondering where your next paycheck is going to come from to pay the rent.
For example:
When Fender, the legendary guitar maker wanted to boost their revenues, what did they do?
Create another line of guitars?
Nope.
Build another amp?
Nah …
They created Fender Play an online subscription course to help people who had already bought a guitar learn to play it!
Don’t just think about one off sales for your courses, offer a subscription if you want true creative freedom, like Fender did!
Why offer a subscription?
Well, imagine starting each new financial year with all your expenses already covered through existing subscriptions rolling over into the new year?
That’s right, pressure off!
How to create and deliver your course
You need to create the content and then use a platform to deliver it to your customers.
Courses should be structured into short videos between 2-6 minutes long with specific learning objectives.
Online teaching platform Udemy has some guidelines showing you how to create the content for your course.
Regarding delivery of your course, there are many platforms, but if you already use Squarespace for your website, you have (nearly, see video below) everything you need to offer paid courses or subscriptions via the platform:
Squarespace has a fantastic Premium Content Area
Note:
You may need to increase your plan to include the Members functionality and you will need to be on an e-commerce plan too, you can upgrade as required.
Using a single website solution will save you both time and money over using other platforms like WordPress that require multiple paid plugins with, sometimes, not very good integration capabilities.
What else do I need?
The only additional bit of software you might need to compliment your Squarespace website is a video hosting service to play your training videos from.
In this case, I recommend purchasing a low-cost Vimeo subscription to provide a private, ad-free video hosting service that you can integrate with your Squarespace platform with a simple cut and paste of the videos’ URL.
To keep your videos private on Vimeo, simply set them to private and only accessible via specific domains and add your website URL as the specific domain where people can play them from.
This measure will stop people randomly stumbling across your course and playing it for free!
What alternatives are there to Squarespace?
In a word, LOTS!
Some platforms I have used in the past:
Teachable is a favourite I have used in the past that takes care of all your needs
Udemy is an online course marketplace, usually selling low-cost but high volume courses
Gumroad is like a creators portal for selling all sorts of digital products
Learndash is a product I’ve used on the WordPress platform
If needed, you can simply place an external link from your existing website to your course portal.
teachable is a great platform to deliver your courses from.
Summary
Let’s do a quick recap
You can turn your passion for photography into a knowledge business!
You can share valuable knowledge with fellow photographers and be seen as a leader in your field
When you get it right, you can literally make money whilst you sleep!
A subscription model can cover some or all of your annual costs reducing financial pressures
If you use Squarespace for your website you already have access to a great membership platform, just add a Vimeo subscription to host your videos
Make sure you break your course up into multiple video’s of about 2-6mins each with learning objectives, Udemy has published a good checklist here
You can cross-sell other products and other services to your customers
As with all your products and services, you should try to get ratings and feedback for your course so future customers have an independent source to make a decision upon
It’s pandemic-proof! (in fact, there was a huge boom in people taking online courses during the pandemic!)
Further considerations
You need a good marketing strategy/social media following and/or email list to promote your course or premium content to find customers
It takes a lot of time and effort to plan and build quality content for a course
There’s some investment to make up-front to get your course up and running, although Udemy is a cheap way in if you don’t mind a lot of competition.
Phew! So … What do you think?
Which technique from this post are you going to try first?
Will you release a new course?
Maybe you’ll mint and sell some (clean!) NFTs, or run your own affiliate scheme?
Or, perhaps I missed one of your favourite ways to make money from your landscape photography business?
Either way, let me know in the comments section below.
I’d love to hear your thoughts and try to reply to every comment.
