Photography is a great hobby, incredibly versatile and demanding. Many photographers would love to make this hobby their profession, but this is only possible in absolutely exceptional cases due to the great competition. What is possible and not too difficult, however, is to sell your own photographs on the Internet. Through your own website, which you can build quickly, it is possible to earn a good extra income. Who knows, maybe the success is so great that you can reduce your main job to a part-time position at some point and thus get more time for the actual hobby – namely photography. To do this, it is necessary to observe a few principles so as not to get lost in the sheer mass of competitors. These include the following:
Build your own website
It’s not impossible to make money with photography, but it’s no walk in the park either. Just sharing your photos on social media or advertising yourself on platforms like Shutterstock or Pexels is a good first step, but it’s not nearly enough. The first step should be to have your own website where you can view your photographs, buy them or order them as prints. This also leads us to the next step, which is to set up a
Once the luck has come that some people are convinced by photography and website and have bought the first pictures, one should definitely try to build customer loyalty. Customer Relationship Management, a strategy to retain customers in the long term, is suitable for this purpose. You can use tools to analyze who likes to buy what, on which occasions they do so, and what their preferences are. You can send them an individual newsletter informing them that a new series of pictures has just been created in the Ore Mountains. Presumably, he is thus more willing to look at these new photos and buy them than to check the website himself at regular intervals.
Offer many formats
Simply sending a file is neither profitable nor particularly attractive. As a photographer, you also have to offer your customers. Offering different formats such as pictures and posters with your own photography is the key here. The customer needs to know right away what he can print and how and put it on his four walls.
Go with the spirit of the times
Every photographer has their own style that cannot be copied. Nevertheless, in any art form there are always trends that change from time to time. For example, if photographs of people in Africa are on the upswing, you should definitely consider going there yourself and taking portraits on location. Political stages like the fast-growing megacities in China or emerging African cities like Lagos also make great subjects.
Always reinventing yourself
Photography not only wants to be learned, but should also always be reinvented. Are there new ways to work with a model, find subjects or rework his or her image? A lifelong enjoyment of experimentation is useful here, so as not to stand still!