Creating Multiple Streams of Income

By Don Giannatti

Photography is a service business by its very nature. There are day rates, shoot fees, licensed images and other specifics that help place commercial photography into the service industry and that can be precipitous place to be. We only make money when we are behind the camera. Five days shooting is great, five days not shooting is not so great.

Now for some this arrangement is fine. The fees are high, the Rep is busy and work is steadily flowing in. Stock photographers have income from work already performed and that is good. However not all of us have enough images to get with the biggest agencies, and if we did, we may find that Rights Managed stock usage has decreased as the royalty free images proliferate.

But for most of us the story remains the same. Shooting we bill for. Marketing, bookkeeping, studio maintenance, testing, researching, and skill enhancement, we don't. We have what is called a Single Source of Revenue.

What I am proposing is developing Multiple Sources of Income. Of course, this could include Stocks and Investments, Real Estate, Trusts and the like, but I want to discuss photographic streams of income.

Personal Stock
The most obvious place to look for additional income is our work. What good are images sitting in boxes or on hard drives? Your images should be a source of income. If you don't have the thousands of images needed to get into a stock agency create your own stock web site with the images you have. Be creative with pricing and rights. Make it simple for the user to search and purchase (or at least set up the purchase) online. Choose the images you love and get the word out that they are available for sale or licensing. (We will discuss OnLine marketing strategies in an upcoming report.)

If you know Photoshop fairly well (I hope you do), you can use it to create manipulated images that convey mood and style. Go through your images with fresh eyes and a mindset of finding images that can serve as creative fodder for Photoshop manipulation. Turn a set of industrial pictures in to a sepia-toned group. A collection of lifestyle images could be blurred a bit at the edges and then 'cross processed' for a whole new look. And these images are unique to you and your personal stock site. Be as aggressive on pricing as you want. You don't have to share the income with an agent, so all the money is yours.

And the powerful thing about the web is it is 24/7 global. You could wake up one morning with a couple of orders ­ that's what we call another stream of income. If your average stock sale is $800 and you sell 10 in a year. 8K additional income.

And you may want to consider your own royalty free image collection, or a fusion of RM and RF. They're your photographs, think creatively and make some money from them.

Photo Art and Fine Art
Selling your image as a print is another way of creating income. There is a renewed interest in the purchasing of images. From street fairs to photoblogs, photographers are selling images.

Create your own gallery of images that are for sale. Keep the size selection small and the prices reasonable and you may be surprised at the resulting income. With printing at labs dropping, you may not have to charge much to be profitable. (In my city I can get a 16x20 lambda for under $20 and a 16x20 LightJet for under $16. If I charged $80 to $100 for the image, I can be very profitable. Actually I can still be profitable at $50.).

Keep in mind that you want this to be passive, in other words, as simple as possible. If the visitor to your site can just click and buy ­ with a CC ­ then your sales potential goes way up. Don't accept CC's? Sure you do. get a PayPal account. Have a copy of the order go straight to your lab. Keep the images on file with your lab so they can make the print and the fulfillment can be done at that point as well.

And with the dramatic quality produced by today's inkjet printers, you could do it all in house. Either way, the result is income produced while you are not behind the camera.

Spec Shooting
This is best illustrated as an example. I have a friend in southern CA who is making a very nice second income from doing what he loves to do best ­ shoot people. He will spend Sunday mornings in his town (a vacation destination) shooting photos of families as they are on the beach and near some of the more picturesque areas. He is a fine portrait shooter and does a very nice job, even though quick, of getting an interesting image of the family and a few individual portraits. If he thinks they may be good subjects, he gets a release as well for his stock collection.

Keep in mind that he simply approaches folks he thinks he would like to shoot and asks if they would like a professional photo taken of them, no charge. He gives them a card or two with a login / password that he has pre-established and tells them they can see ­ and purchase - the images online. BTW, he is shooting digital so there is little to no money out of his pocket. (And if you are wondering, he is shooting an S2, High JPEG for these images so his processing time is not an issue.)

When the visitor comes to the site and logs on, they see their portraits and the sizes offered as well as the price and purchase information. The visitors can click and buy the images with CC, the money is instantly in his bank, the order information goes to his lab, they make and ship the prints. all while my friend the photographer is doing other things to make himself profitable.

Can you think of ways to add to your income by doing something similar to the above? Are there places, people, or things that you could shoot and share with those who would like to have a professionally made photograph?

Additional "Clients"
This is another situation that calls for an example.

My brother is a photographer in the LA area. In addition to his fashion and beauty work he has found himself an interesting niche shooting very high-end audio equipment. This sometimes means doing some extremely demanding location shoots and shoots with celebrities.

Recognizing that usually the crews, designers and sometimes even the subjects never get a chance to see the images that were done, Jimi started setting up galleries of his shoots to share with all that attended. He would simply hand his card with the login information to everyone he shot. They in turn could visit the site and order images. He has sometimes doubled his shoot fee on image orders.

The ability to make and maintain "private galleries" gives the photographer another way to market to selected groups of buyers.

Increased Wedding / Portrait Sales
Wedding photographers often face the fact that after the proofs are delivered, the main salesperson is the bride. If she is good at getting the proofs to everyone that wanted to order, that's great. If she isn't, then many orders never get placed.

The wedding photographer with a way to show the images online can hand her card to everyone she shoots at the wedding. Thc card has a bit of branding, the Bride and Groom names, and predetermined login information. Then the folks from out of town, those that couldn't get a chance to see the proofs, and others who may not normally be in the proof 'loop' can view the wedding and order the photos they want. (We heard of a shooter who got a nearly $500 order from the band at a wedding she shot. They wanted to use her pictures of them to help land more event gigs.)

We set up a separate shooting area to do portraits at our weddings. The bride and groom love it, the guests all want their photos taken there and. the additional revenue from print orders can be amazing.

In addition to the above, consider your knowledge and experience as a marketable product as well. Volunteer speaking engagements can turn into profitable speaking engagements. Writing articles and "how-to" papers can be fun and bring in an additional stream of revenue. We know of photographers who have created Photoshop actions that are now sold on their web sites, as well as T-shirts, coffee mugs and sports bags. (Visit www.cafepress.com for more information on that possibility.) In a few cases, photographers have been able to create a niche of near celebrity status based on their ability to distill complex information into an easily understood message.

I hope to have inspired you to think about the possibilities of multiple streams of income that make your life and your business more profitable. Good luck, and let us know what is working for you.

Don Giannatti
steel id
Designer, photographer and now and then musician.
Don is also the editor of www.photographicmarketing.com
He can be reached at don@photographicmarketing.com

top

Do Business on the Web

thePHOTOtool is a fantastic way to show more images, manage private (password-protected) galleries, manage and sell stock, sell prints and more...

• Manage Multiple Galleries
• Password Protected Client Site
• E-commerce ready with shopping cart and CC payment
• Full Stock Image solution with Keyword Management and Client Search function
• Unlimited Users
• Unlimited Galleries
• Group image uploads in the Private galleries
• Client created Lightboxes
• Order Management
• ...much more...

Call Ron at 602 448 9292 or see the site for more information.

Total Control Site

Get a custom designed Web site that gives you the ability to update your images, add / modify copy, manage your Meta Tags (for SEO) and run your own Blog. Easy to use and administrated from a browser based tool (which allows for updates from anywhere, this site is the most powerful way to show your work, keep your clients interested and gain prominence in the SE rankings.

Call Ron at 602 448 9292 or see the site for more information.