Side Hustle Ideas for Fashion Photographers
With so much down time recently for so many of us, we've had to get creative about ways to make income. I've always been really keen to have multiple streams of income in my life (primarily because I enjoy creating new things!) but now, more than ever, I've been SO grateful to not reply solely on my ability to take photos to make an income.
Don't get me wrong, shooting fashion will always be my biggest source of income, and will be what I want to focus on more than anything else. But when the pandemic hit, it was another wake up call that having multiple ways to earn money really is the way forward.
So how can you start to build "side hustles" for yourself? It's far easier than you think!
Stock Photography
Stock photography can get a really bad rep. It's known for cheesy images of doctors patients, or kids playing on swings... things like that. But the truth is that stock photography DOES sell, and it can make people a decent living. It's also getting cooler. Websites like Stocksy are very considerate of who they allow to sign up to their site, and as a result, the quality of the imagery is very high.
I personally use WireStock.io which I really like. The reason that I like it so much is that it acts like a distribution centre. You upload your images to their one library, and they then distribute your images to all the major stock libraries for you. No more needing to upload to each and every single library! Life saver.
I've spent a lot of time in the last two weeks adding to my library, and I've already made some sales. I went back through my old hard drives, and found images that I felt would be a good commercial fit. I also looked through old test shoots I'd done with freelance models, and even some old lifestyle work I'd done for some clients. I messaged those past models/clients, explaining what a stock library is, and what images I was interested in uploading, and asked them to sign a model release. Most of them were more than happy to do that! So don't discount old work. It could make you a lot of extra cash.
Selling Prints
I've never personally sold prints, because the focus of my work has always been on fashion photography, and I personally don't think that anyone wants a print of a random model in their house. I could, of course, sell some of my landscape work (I do this a lot for personal fun because I've lived in such a beautiful part of the world for so long), but I've got to pick and choose what I do!
If you take beautiful photos of landscapes, travel, or anything that you think would sell well as prints, absolutely look into selling your images as prints online.
One quick Google search, and here are a bunch of sites I've found that you could sell prints through (I'm tempted now.....!)
Preset Sales
You may know another photographer who's recently set up a preset shop....... ;) yeah, so I did this recently! It had been something I'd been wanting to do for a while, but never had the time or real motivation to set up, until the pandemic hit. It's actually really easy to set up a preset shop. I just used my Squarespace website's inbuilt commerce abilities, and added them to my shop.
You can sell presets for a relatively low price, and you can market them to photographers, and the general public as well. I actually think that "non photographers" are more likely to buy presets these days, because they want the ability to quickly make their images look more professional! So if you do a lot of work with consumer clients (ie, portrait shoots, family shoots, etc) presets could be a really great way to go.
Shop My Adobe Lightroom Presets
Teach Photography Online to Consumers
I get asked ALL the time "What camera should I buy to take photos day to day?" or "How can I improve my photography skills with my phone?" These are questions that "non photographers" have, and you could absolutely help them! I've chosen to focus my energy on helping professional photographers specifically, so I don't do this, but I know for a fact that I could.
Maybe you could set up a little workshop via zoom, where people can pay £20 to come and learn how to use their camera from you. If even 10 people signed up to that, you'd like an extra £200 really easily. Sounds cool, no?
Or you could even create a mini email course up, where people pay £20 and you send them all photo tasks each day, and look over their work for them and help them critique.
Don't discount one on one training either. You can charge a lot more for this, and there will always be people out there who want to learn something quickly, and want your full attention. Obviously this should be done online right now, but is perhaps something you could carry on doing in person once the lockdowns lift!
Affiliate Links
If you've never heard of affiliate links before, these are essentially links that you share with other people, and if they click them and buy something from that website, you get a small commission from the seller. Commissions are often low, (2% or so, but I've seen some at 8%-10%), but if you get a lot of clicks, it can be quite a nice bit of extra cash!
I've always used Amazon Associates, and I get about £25 - £30 a month. It's not a lot, but every penny helps, and I literally make money doing nothing with that.
There are official affiliate link programs out there, and I know that Adobe for example, have pretty good schemes. Get googling, and think about what you genuinely use day to day that you could share with your audience.
Side note: only promote things you GENUINELY like and use. People catch on very quickly if you're just sharing random links to things to try and get them to buy.
Retouching
If you're a skilled retoucher, you could absolutely sell your skills to other fashion photographers, or even wedding/portrait photographers, to retouch their images for them. Prices will vary depending on your skill level, but to give you an idea, I've paid anything from £8 per image, to £50 per image depending on who I hire. It's lucrative work that you can do from home with the tools you probably already own for your own business.
Shooting Weddings / Portraits / Headshots
Possibly obvious, but as fashion photographers, there's nothing stopping us having whole seperate photography businesses. If you live outside of a big city, or you don't really want to put all your eggs into the fashion basket, there is nothing wrong with also shooting weddings, portraits or headshots on the side to make extra cash. For YEARS I've shot headshots for people, and still sometimes do. I enjoy doing them, and people who like my fashion work are often keen to have images of themselves taken in my style.
If you're going to do this, I highly recommend having two seperate websites and two seperate Instagram / social channels. It will be less confusing for your audience, you'll be able to be more targeted with your marketing, and looks more professional all around. Obviously it is a lot more work to do two, but I do think it's very important.
