How to Create Passive Income with Photography (2024)

• Mompreneur Money
• January 10, 2020
• 5:30 am
• 3 Comments

How do you make passive income with photography?

How to Create Passive Income with a Photography Business is a Guest Post from Sarah Driscoll at The Unraveled Academy.

As a budding photographer, you may assume that the only way to make money is to take clients and offer photography sessions.

But there are lots of great ways to make money as a photographer—especially for those who are not interested in photographing families or weddings.

Here are six smart ways to earn passive income photography.

Sell Stock Photos

If you enjoy taking pictures of nature, food or your own children more than clients, then stock photography may be ideal for you.

Food or travel photography is somewhat self-explanatory. You snap some beautiful photos that could be used in many ways and you load them into a stock website and sell them.

But did you know that many stock websites also accept and LOVE images of your own children? Perhaps your child is making a mess while eating spaghetti and you snap a hilarious and candid image of them.

There are a lot of businesses looking for an image just like that and willing to spend money for it rather than having to set up their own photoshoot.

Companies like Offset and Cavan are good examples of platforms willing and eager to take your more personal images and sell them. Also consider loading your images into iStockPhoto, Adobe Stock, and ShutterStock. The more places you sell your stock images, the more passive income you will make.

Sell Prints

Fotomoto, Zazzle and Fine Art America are all places to consider selling your prints. All you have to do is upload your photos and they are immediately accessible to be printed worldwide. For those looking to have more control over your print sales, consider setting up a shop in Shootproof or Pixieset and marketing them yourself. This will likely take a bit more work on your end, but it’ll give you complete control over your sales.

Teach on an Educational Platform Online

There are many people looking to enhance their photography skills which makes it an ideal subject to teach online.

Consider looking into teaching opportunities at top educational platforms like Skillshare, Unraveled Academy, The Narrative Society and ClickinMoms.

These places offer to pay their teachers good money to create content on various photography subjects. This also takes the marketing out of your hands and puts it in theirs.

Sell Evergreen Products

Another great way to create passive income is to consider selling evergreen products on your own website. Evergreen products are available for purchase 24/7 online.

You could create informational and downloadable photography-focused PDFs, e-books or videos that are available for purchase. Website platforms such as Squarespace allow for you to set up your own shop and sell products.

Related Content: How to Plan Your First Digital Product

Become an Affiliate

There are many incredible opportunities for photographers to become affiliates with companies who want to continue to get their name out there. An affiliate simply promotes other people’s good or services and receives a commission based off of that.

Places like Style + Select, Honeybook, The Unraveled Academy, Shootproof, and Tiny Prints will give you a commission for sharing their services with your followers.

You will receive your own affiliate link and whenever someone signs up using your link, you get a set amount of commission off the sale. It is an ideal way to make a passive income supporting businesses you use and love.

Become an Influencer

If you enjoy sharing your work and the brands you love, consider building your presence on social media as an influencer.

The more engaged followers you have on Instagram, the more likely that brands and businesses will begin reaching out to you to collaborate. Social media influencers often get free products and compensation for sharing products they love with their followers. Many of these brands and businesses need good imagery of their products and trusted resources sharing their products to gain traction.

Using your photography skills in more ways than one will allow for you to create a number of steady passive income streams.

Just because you coin yourself as a “photographer” does not mean that you must only take clients. Your options as a photographer are endless, so get out there, get creative and explore new ways to connect with brands and businesses who need your expertise and skills.

Create Passive Income With Photography

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