14 Best Ways To Make Money From Photography & Designs in 2020

Do you want to make money with your photos?

Live from photography! Earn money as a photographer, do what you love to do all day. Driving to the motifs in breathtaking landscapes in the morning instead of going to work - most amateur photographers have this wish at some point.
"You take such great photos, can't you even take a picture of my family?" And similar questions are the ones that motivate and further fuel the fire in the loose idea. Wouldn't it be possible? Couldn't I at least make money from photography at the same time?
You are often smiled at for such ideas and dreams. You may even smile at yourself. Earn money with photography ...! Pfff! What a crap. Stay realistic. Drive to the office. Let photography remain a hobby.
Of course, that is one possibility - let photography remain your hobby. For many, this may be the right decision. However, it is also possible to make money with photography. Either by the way - or even as a main job.
We did that. We both had other jobs (well paid, secure!) Before we decided to make a living from photography. In the meantime, both of us have been making a living from photography for several years now.
We will show you how we did it and what specific and realistic options you have to make money with your photography.

Money with photography: my first photo assignment

I earned my first euro with photography in the riding stable.
"You have a camera, can you take pictures of my horse?"
It was that easy, my first photo assignment. The thanks were donated five euros and, more importantly, the message to the stablemates: “Sina took this great photo! Don't you want one from your horse too? "
Horse portraits were followed by photos of people and horses, photos of riding tournaments, photos of dogs, photos of children, and at some point family shoots. There was no website, no business model behind it, no marketing or concept. A "great camera" and word-of-mouth propaganda was my entry into paid photography. The fact that I knew people and that cell phone cameras at the time were just no good was my luck.

Is it still possible today to make money with photography?

How is it today when everyone has a great camera and even the cell phone cameras are much better than the SLR cameras from back then? Can you still start making money with photography today?
Our short answer: yes.

There are two conditions:

Be good.

Invest.

"Be good" does not only refer to photography. Yes, your photos should be really good. But still, there are gigantic photographers who don't earn a dime from photography and there are mediocre photographers who earn a fortune.
Marketing and contacts play a much bigger role if you want to make money with your photos than the photos themselves.
You should either know everyone and make and maintain new, good, long-term contacts every day. If you don't like that, you need excellent marketing to stand out from the crowd of millions of photos, to stand out, to get people to pay for your photos.
"Invest" - not necessarily in equipment, you probably already have, and you don't need anything better. Invest time, blood, sweat, and tears. While it is very easy to earn $ 10 a month from photography, it seems almost impossible to regularly earn $ 100 or even $ 1000 a month from it.
In order to make a serious living with your photos (we leave 10 $ for friendship outside here), you really have to hang in there, learn a lot, read a lot and do a lot. "It's a little bit by the way" is definitely not possible - as any serious way of making money.
But if you are good and invest, it works. The two of us live exclusively from photography. And I had to switch to this industry from one day to the next because, as a teacher, I wasn't allowed to slowly build up a secondary business. From one day to the next I was a photographer.
In this article, we not only show you the possibilities of how you can earn money with your photos, but we also tell you honestly about our experiences in different ways.
Below we also give you an insight into our business and show you what we are currently earning money with.

How can I make money from photography?

There are roughly three ways to make money with photography:

- You take pictures of jobs ("craft")

No matter whether baby bump shooting, real estate photography, or as a photographer in the village disco: If you photograph jobs, you will be booked as a photographer, take the desired photos for the customer and he will pay you for it. We'll show you how to do this in points 1 and 2.

- You sell photos that you already have ("art")

Nobody will come to you while sitting on the sofa and offering you money for a photo slumbering on your hard drive. Nevertheless, you can still make money without contract photography by first taking pictures and then (hopefully) selling your photos. We will show you the different options under points 3 to 8.

- You make money around photography

Instead of selling photos directly, you can also make money with products and services related to photography. We sell e.g. B. Books about photography, give coaching - but maybe YouTube is also something for you or you do the image editing for a photographer? Look at points 9 to 14!

Commerce, taxes, Chamber of Crafts ...

Please note that you may need to register a business if you are making money with photography. Of course, you also have to tax the income. For contract photography, an entry in the Chamber of Crafts is also required. To find out about the legal requirements if you have decided on one or more options from this article.
The good news in advance: You do not need any training, no studies, and no further training. If you find yourself a photographer from today, you can be. You only have to implement it yourself.

14 ways to make money with photography

1. Photograph orders

While the other options sound much more modern and fancy and hip, most photographers still earn their money in a classic way: they offer the photography service to a customer who pays them for the photos. Photographs are taken for private individuals (e.g. children's photos) or for companies (e.g. real estate). The areas are almost endlessly diverse.
Some suggestions:
Photo orders for private individuals: portraits, family shootings, baby bump photos, couple photos, children's photos, nude photography, pet photography, events such as weddings or birthdays
There is also exceptional contract photography. B. Money with birth photography
Photo orders for companies: business events, product photography, real estate photography, food photography, fashion photography, concert photography, industrial photography, party photography (e.g. in discos)
Almost everything is conceivable here. We take pictures ourselves. B. sometimes tours for tour operators or rooms for hotels.
Most photographers today are no longer trained photographers, but typical career changers, where the demand for orders grew until they decided to make money with them.

Our practical tips to get you started

Take pictures in the area that you are very familiar with and in which you have a lot of contacts. If you have a dog and are in the dog club, improve your dog photos to a very good level and ask your friends if they would like photos of their dog. If you have small children and all your girlfriends too, this may be the right starting point for you. On the other hand, you are in the real estate industry and know a hundred colleagues who all don't have good photos ... you can see what we're getting at.
First of all, it is important to get off to a good start. You don't have to stay in this division forever. I started with animal photography as written above - I haven't been doing it for years. You will gradually get a taste of other areas (your friends with the babies will surely want a picture of their whole family, and someday somebody will always have a friend who gets married) and you will automatically come to the one you are looking for the most you want and the one you like the most. Then you can specialize.
In business, a lot goes through contacts. If you want to take pictures for companies, be known locally as a photographer. But also inquire directly at companies and offer your services.
If you want to make money from contract photography, it always makes sense to have a good website with a current portfolio. You should also ensure visibility otherwise. You can decide for yourself whether you would rather be online (Instagram, Facebook, etc.) or offline (newspaper advertisements, poster advertising, etc.).

How much money can I realistically make with photo orders?

Do not expect to earn a significant amount from retail customers in the first few months. As soon as it gets a little more expensive, most people are surprisingly little interested in your photos and you have to dig deeper into marketing. But if you have found "your profession" and want to start properly, aim for hourly wages of around $ 100. If you follow our 2 big tips ( be good and invest a lot ), you can manage to live purely from this type of photography - but it is a lot of work.
Specific example: We estimate several hundred euros for a family shoot. For a wedding reportage several thousand.

2. Work as an assistant for a photographer

A realistic introduction to making money with photography can be your first job as an assistant to a photographer. That may sound unsatisfactory at first, after all, it's not about your photos and an assistant job also have nothing of the beautiful dream of "getting rich online from the sofa". However, working as an assistant offers you a very good opportunity to get real insights into contract photography. You also have the opportunity to improve your photography skills and find out which areas of photography you like. Do you want to spend your Sundays with the camera on sports fields? What is it like working as a wedding photographer for 16 hours at a time and with no-fault tolerance? Is working with models your thing? Or do you like to photograph children?
As an assistant, you earn a bit of money (daily rates in the low three-digit range are realistic) and can find out well next to your main job whether working as a photographer is something for you. You can also build up a portfolio that you need if you want to start as a photographer (see point 1).
3. Make money with the stock photography
Stock photography is always mentioned as THE opportunity to make some money "by the way" with photography. Stock photography works in such a way that you upload your photos, well tagged, to portals, where different companies can download them for a fee. The companies then use your photos for their marketing purposes, i.e. advertising material, websites, etc.
There are several large stock photo agencies, the best known are:
Adobe Stock
Shutterstock
iStock Photo
Alamy
Getty Images
Getting to most agencies is very easy. At Getty Images, for example, the admission requirements are very high, you will only be accepted with a really excellent portfolio. Instead of a few cents, you get two or three-digit amounts for a single sale.

Our honest opinion and experience

In principle, stock photography is a very easy way to make money. The dream that many hobby photographers have is to simply upload tons of old vacation photos, etc., for which they then earn "on the side" and above all do nothing.
Now. You can make a lot of money with stock photography. But the colleagues who are known to us and who do that do nothing else all day but photo production for the stock agencies. And they shoot bombastic. "Uploading any old photos" doesn't do anything - because the agencies are full of these photos and to make money you have to stand out and have a portfolio of thousands of stock photos at the same time. You almost always earn less than one euro per sale and to really get something out of it, you have to have at least a few hundred sales a month.
In 2007 I worked intensively on the stock photography for a few months and earned a full $ 35 in about three months. In the next 12 years, in which the photos were still online, another fabulous $ 1.50 in earnings came in - so "by the way in your sleep" you don't earn any money with this.
However, stock photography can in principle already be an opportunity for you to “passively” make money with your photos, and a photo can still bring in sales years later. For this, you have to deal intensively with the matter. You need to know which photos are in demand at which agency and deliver these photos in excellent quality. This is too much work for us to make a profit and our photos are simply worth more than a few cents. Therefore, we quickly gave up this earning opportunity completely. However, some colleagues earn serious sums from it!

How do you start with stock photography?

Take a look at the different portals, get to know their quality standards, and research what kind of photos are bought a lot. Often these are photos with people on them. Can you produce such photos in this quality? Also, think about the model release contracts you always need and any fees your models may have!
Log in quietly, upload a few photos and see if stock photography is for you. You can actually lose nothing, the entry is very low-threshold. You don't need marketing, you don't need contacts and you don't need to invest money.

4. Sell your photos to magazines and newspapers

My first photo published in a magazine was a reportage photo of cruelty to animals at a large horse show that I sold to a horse magazine. I actively wrote to the magazine and asked if they were interested in the photo. You printed it in a large article in the next issue.
If you have photos that could be interesting for magazines, you can offer them directly. But be aware that the photos should have a rarity value - otherwise the magazine is not interested because it gets thrown in abundance everywhere. So your photos should either be of high documentary value (like my example) or photographically absolutely outstanding.
You negotiate the fee for your photo directly with the magazine. If you - accidentally or planned - take an extremely explosive paparazzi photo, the value of the photo can, of course, be immense and you can earn a large sum with a single photo. As a rule, however, you will probably first sell local photos to the local newspaper. This pays rather badly, but it can possibly lead to interesting long-term collaborations.

Our practical tip

In general, it is always a good idea not to target National Geographic straight away, but to think locally. Sometimes it is amazingly easy to establish yourself as a local photographer and if this niche is not yet firmly occupied, you may be able to become the “photographer of your city” or region faster than you think. And while you're at it: If you live in a tourist region, try to sell your really good landscape photos of this region to hotels, etc.!

To see your own photos in magazines and magazines is a special pleasure for every photographer. Start small and target local newspapers first

5. Sell calendars, murals, and other photo products

Designing photo calendars (or puzzles, canvases ...) is pretty easy and easy - and you can easily monetize them. Here you register, create a product, Calvendo takes over the distribution and you get a share of 15-30% in the profit (not in sales!). A calculation example from Calvendo: If one of your calendars is sold for $ 50, you get something over $ 3 for it (which of course you also have to pay tax). You get a higher percentage of your product is very popular and is bought a lot.
Zoomwork offers one way to market your photos as murals. Here you upload your photo and others can order it as a canvas or other mural. Zoomwork participates in the sale with a commission.
If your calendar or mural is good and meets a topic that is in demand and has not yet been "sucked", you can earn a few hundred euros a year with Calvendo, Zoomwork, or other photo products agencies.

Our honest opinion and alternative idea

Only the platform itself becomes rich with these platforms. For us, it is nothing to "sell" our work in this way, but we have meanwhile become much more confident than we were when we started out in photography. We prefer not to sell our photos at all, rather than making someone else rich with them.
However, Calvendo and similar models can be a scary push for the ego, and "Whoooa, Amazon sells a calendar with my photos !!" is, of course, a great feeling.
We ourselves have already sold calendars, but without intermediaries directly through our blog. To do this, you first need a certain range so that potential customers can even find out about your product. If you've already made a name for yourself locally, it's a way to sell calendars and other products directly - through local bookstores and other contacts in your city or region, for example.
You won't get rich by selling photo products, but holding a real work of yours in your hand and selling it to others is probably the nicest way to make money with photography.

6. Make money from photo contests

Photo competitions are an interesting and nice way to make money from photography. The prerequisite: win! Of course, you have to be better than the other participants and meet the taste of the jury.
At  https://www.photocontestinsider.com/ you will find an international overview of photo competitions, but very unfiltered and too confusing for our taste.
In addition to prize money, you can often win interesting material prizes at photo competitions, mostly photo equipment, sometimes e.g. B. also travel.

Our honest opinion and experience

I once took part in photo competitions for a few months and had a lot more fun than z. B. on stock photography. It was actually worth it: During this time, I won really good material prizes such as a mirrorless camera and a photo backpack, which I still use today. In addition, one of our photos was shown by winning a large exhibition in London, we had interview requests and also requests to buy the picture. Another photo was published in a large photo magazine.
Photo competitions can not only be interesting for making money and winning equipment but also to make a name for yourself as a photographer and to show your photos to a larger audience. The hurdle here is clearly the quality of the photos: It's best to first look at the winning galleries of the past few years. Can your photo keep up here? In case of doubt, it is always worth trying - you have nothing to lose.
The disadvantage of photo competitions: Read the conditions of participation carefully - many competitions are pure "picture collection events", which, with your participation, will give you full rights to exploit your picture. In this case, in the hope of winning a prize, you give the competition all image rights, sometimes even exclusive! Take care and avoid this kind of dubious organizers.

7. Sell your photos through exhibitions

How do you sell photos? The biggest hurdle is to make potential buyers aware of your work. This works relatively well via exhibitions, which also bring an ego push for the artist with you: there is an exhibition with YOUR PHOTOS!
You can either organize exhibitions yourself. Don't just think of the big art halls here, but also of showing pictures in a small frame. Some photographers exhibit in cafes and restaurants, for example. Maybe you already have contacts that you could use to show your photos. The disadvantage is a necessary investment on your part in attractive large prints or exposures and maybe also in the marketing of the exhibition.
You can also get to exhibitions through competitions or a win. As a rule, only your winning photo will be displayed here between the other winners.
To land on larger exhibitions, you need contacts with curators and galleries. To arouse interest here, create an exciting and unique portfolio.

8. Make money with mini-orders through photo apps

A very new way to earn a few euros with photos is to take mini-photo jobs through a smartphone app. Download the free app "AppJobber". Various small orders are listed here, which you can photograph with your smartphone. For example, a job could be to take a photo of a particular attraction or an advertising poster or supermarket. Accept the job via the app, take the photo with your mobile phone camera and upload it to the app. You will receive $ 1.00 for each completed job, later a little more.
An alternative is the "Streetspotr" app, which works the same way and pays you $ 2.50 per job.
With these apps, you can also earn a few euros with your photography if you are bored or waiting for something in the city anyway. It is hardly a serious business, but rather a very low-threshold pastime that brings you small pocket money with snapped photos.

9. Become an influencer

Maybe you are smiling at this point very much, but as an influencer (or, for example, "Instagram star") you can theoretically get rich with photography. This requires an extreme amount of time (over years!) And a lot of work with the matter. Contrary to popular belief, influencers don't actually get rich from doing nothing and prettiness, but from hard, coordinated work that is unpaid forever - and may remain so forever.
Instagram is currently the most important platform for influencers, YouTube is also interesting (see point 10) and TikTok is booming.

How do I make money as an influencer? 

To become an influencer, you have to achieve high visibility with high-quality content. In this way, you first build up a large following. From the random posting of photos that do not work (even if it looks like this to others), you also have to be extremely consistent. In order to be able to make money at some point via Instagram or other social media channels, you have to deal extensively with current trends, hashtags, algorithms, and networking and be active on the platform for several hours every day. From about 10,000 followers (this number can also vary widely), the first reputable companies will approach you and offer you cooperations - such as product tests. If you and your followers are interesting in the company, they will pay you money for presenting your product to your followers.

Our recommendation

The dream of becoming an influencer is haunted by an unimaginably large number of young people against whom you have to compete.
Since serious building up a large number of followers on Instagram etc. is hard work, we only recommend it if you are extremely keen on it and are generally the type for self-marketing and social media. If you don't like that, you should approach your goal of making money with your photos differently.

10. Become a Youtuber

You can also earn money as a photographer on YouTube. The most successful photo YouTubers are not even outstanding photographers. Your personality and an exciting appearance in front of the camera are much more important here.
There are also a lot of people who talk about photography on YouTube. Most of them do this pretty badly or boring, which is why you can still have a chance here. In addition to huge photo knowledge and the ability to self-market, recognition and great entertainment are required on YouTube.

How can I make money as a Youtuber?

As on Instagram, the first step is to achieve high visibility and to gather many followers. In order for you to make money with your videos, you have to inspire people, it has to be fun to watch and also impart knowledge. If your account is large enough, you can then show advertisements in front of or in the middle of your videos that you can use to make money. You can also test or recommend products in your videos, for which the manufacturers pay you money if your account is large enough.

11. Offer photo editing

One way to make money indirectly from photography is to offer photo editing. You will be surprised how many photographers do not do their own image editing! Are you good in Photoshop or Lightroom and have fun editing, best to specialize in one area and build a portfolio.
You can offer your services directly to photographers or companies, or you can register on platforms such as  https://www.guru.com or  https://www.fiverr.com/ .

12. Sell e-books about photography

You can also earn money indirectly from photography by writing. What are the subjects in photography that fascinate you and that you could write about? Important: Don't choose an extreme niche topic, someone has to buy your product too!
If you can write, creating an e-book is relatively easy. It is more difficult that it becomes good, is valuable for the reader, and, above all, is also read!
The difficulty with e-book sales is sales. If you already have a high reach, you can market your e-book yourself and sell it through Digistore.
Another option is Kindle Direct Publishing (kdp) through Amazon . Here you can easily publish your book for free and get 70% of the profit.

Our honest opinion and experience

We personally had a lot of fun writing e-books - much more than just postponing stock photos or being up-to-date on Instagram! More e-books are planned for the future and we wish we had more time! We sell our e-books exclusively through our own shop and market them entirely ourselves. Of course, this is only possible through our blog, which has a certain reach.
How much money you can earn with e-books on photography depends enormously on your reach. The bottom line here is again marketing and building awareness. If your book flops, you don't earn a single euro and have invested all the time and work for free. But if you manage to market a good book well, you can earn several thousand euros a month.

13. Sell photo coaching and workshops

You can also earn money by teaching photography! You don't necessarily have to photograph orders yourself. It is important that your photos are very good, that you know a lot about the theory and that you can convey your knowledge well.
In every major city, there are photo schools and workshop providers who are always looking for coaches and photo trainers. Photoshops also sometimes offer to coach and are looking for managers. Of course, it is imperative that you yourself have a great deal of know-how in the theory and practice of photography. In addition, you should have a lot of fun mediating and be ready to answer beginner questions patiently and understandably. Awakening the joy of photography with others and leading them to their first good photos can be an incredibly nice feeling!
By the way, Jan earned his first euro in photography by giving photo courses for a photoshop that was looking for a workshop manager. When we later went into business for ourselves with photography, he gave courses for a photo school. In the meantime, we offer coaching and even photo tours through the lights of the world.

How much money can I realistically make with it?

If you work as a photo trainer for a photo school, you can spend several hundred euros per workshop. It is realistic to start with one order per month (usually at the weekend), which you can of course expand. Workshops and photo courses are a great way to make money on the go, without having to waste time off your main job.

14. Sell illustrated books

If you have traveled far and take outstanding photos that the world must see, you can consider publishing a picture book. As you can imagine, this is far from easy, but there are photographers who can do it.
To earn money with your photos in your own illustrated book, first, put together an exciting portfolio. Your photos shouldn't be just a series of pictures, but tell stories. See for yourself what could move people to pay $ 50 for your illustrated book instead of looking at pictures online for free. If you have a convincing answer, apply your portfolio to various publishers.

How much money can I realistically make with it?

Little - the publisher gets the most money. As a writer, you only get a few percents off sales. A picture book is therefore something for the ego and for making your name known. If you are aiming for a career as a photographer, such a publication is, of course, a very good reference.

How we make money from photography

I never had the idea of ​​seriously making money with photography. I studied "something right", I became a teacher. As a civil servant, I was no longer allowed to earn money on the side with photography. I had to cancel requests for shootings that I received through my contacts from my student days. Until I realized how unhappy I was in my safe and well-paid teaching job. I looked at the clock more often than the students. That I had no desire, that my career was already in my mid-20s, my whole professional career was already over. I realized that I somehow wanted more - more what I was passionate about.
To quit my job as a teacher and to become a photographer from one day to the next (because there was no other legal way) was probably the biggest decision of my life. I haven't regretted this decision for a second. But she also asked not to do photography "somehow a little on the side", but immediately seriously and correctly. I had to make money. That's exactly why I know it works!
Today Jan and I both live completely from photography for years. There is hardly any area of ​​commercial photography in which we would not have sniffed at least once. We rejected some because they were not the right thing for us, others we expanded because they were exactly what we wanted to do with our lives.

Currently (2020) we earn our money like this:

1. Wedding photography: The division through which we make the most money is our wedding photography. We advertise them on our website, Weddings are a profitable, but also very difficult division, because not only do you have an extremely high level of responsibility (and you can never make up for a missed photo again), but you also have to master many areas of photography first class. We both took pictures for many years when we started weddings and definitely advise beginners to avoid them.
   
   The disadvantage of wedding photography is that you can only earn money from May to October - and then mainly on Saturdays. We took advantage of the "free winter" to build up other areas of the photographs and thus earn additional money.
2. Family photography, baby photography, portraits, etc.: We only take this type of assignment if we are explicitly asked for it - usually by former wedding couples of ours. It is an example of how your activity in one division also gives you orders in others.
3. Coaching: Jan earned his first money in photography through photo coaching. Rather unusual, but for him actually the entry into "making money with photos". Jan used to work as a photo coach for various agencies, today we both offer photo coaching via Lights of the World and from 2021 even photo trips.
4. E-books: At Lights of the World we share our knowledge of photography with you free of charge - such as B. in this article. However, there is also a shop connected to our blog where we sell e-books about photography. In these we show our readers, for example, our system of image processing or how they learn to take photos really well.
5. Travel photography for companies: When we travel in the winter half-year, we often take photos from the travel industry, for example for tour operators, tour operators, vehicle rental companies or hotels. We have already photographed for destinations themselves. It is great for us to combine our two passions of travel and photography and also to earn money in the process. It was precisely this passion that was our reason for starting travel photography in 2017.
6. Selling photos: Sometimes, but so far only on request, we sell photos we take to private individuals or companies. For example, a couple of our landscape photos of people all over the USA hang in the living room and a few of our wedding photos in cafés in downtown 
7. Influencer: Because we are very present with Lights of the World as a photoblog and on social media, companies are increasingly asking us about cooperation. If a product suits us very well and can be interesting for our readers, we can make money by honestly reporting on our experience with it.

So it is not just an area of ​​photography that we are currently earning money from, but various pillars that have gradually developed. This compilation shifts a little every year: some areas are dropped, others we consciously strengthen, some we rediscover. We already have some completely new ideas for the future that we want to try out.

Our last tip for you to make money with your photography

We don't talk about anything, we experience it ourselves every day: it is possible to make money with photography. Either by the way or even so much that you can make a good living from it.
It is important that you dare to do it. Before others believe in you and your photos, you have to do it yourself first. Be a photographer. From today. And if you are good and want to - make money. If that's your goal, get away from "TfP" and free shoots for "portfolio expansion" as soon as possible. Otherwise, you are like so many colleagues who just DO NOT earn money with photography - and you are in there forever. Come out. Get in there and take the step!
Be a photographer. One who makes money! We hope that our 14 options will help you.

Do you already make money from photography or do you plan to? What worked for you - or which way do you want to go? We are looking forward to your comment!