Making Money With Photography - 27 Ideas to Make Money With Your Camera
By John Huegel
Here are 27 great ideas for growing your income using photography:
1. Portrait parties - offer to parents with small kids. Hosts get freebies and⁄or piece
of subsequent bookings.
2. Drawing for free senior sessions at tanning, hair and clothing stores
3. Offer to shoot and write articles for the local weekly paper (small-time weekly)
4. Mine the engagement section of the paper for wedding leads
5. Identify local businesses that may benefit from photography (restaurants, salons,
etc.) Target them from yellow pages. Shoot a free "spec shot" and make a sample brochure
to show them what you can do.
6. Make a brochure for summer beach/tourist photos and leave at hotels, restaurants,
rest stops, souvenir places
7. Make framed decorative artwork/photography samples and show to doctor⁄dentist
offices and hotels, and other places that decorate. Offer them special pricing on
quantities of prints.
8. Hire a small airplane for the afternoon. Do a spec aerial shoot and send proofs to
local businesses, universities and other places that might like to use aerial photos in
their marketing.
9. Shoot a couple of nice for-sale homes in your neighborhood and sell yourself to
local realtors.
10. Contact local law and insurance businesses to offer up insurance photography services.
11. Contact the local garden club, and shoot their show or event.
12. Run a special on pet photography (3rd highest photo buy!) Contact pet grooming
businesses and the local vet and offer to display or conduct sessions there for
cooperative marketing.
13. Make postcards out of good local scenic shots and sell them to local businesses for
tourism or unique advertising.
14. Make a slide show of local businesses so they can use them on DVDs at fairs,
festivals, expos.
15. Approach nonprofits, clubs or small businesses to build how-to slideshows from
their activities.
16. Contact the local marinas or yacht clubs. Offer to do "boat day" photographs, small
prints or build collage for the club, sell prints to owners.
17. Contact fishing and hunting clubs - members, prizes, day-of-tournament photos,
website images.
18. Contact convention center/bureau and offer services... even if they have a
staff⁄contract. Sometimes they will need extra coverage... or the old guy might get fired!
19. Offer photo scanning and restoration... consider offering the service for free to
victims of flood⁄fire⁄disasters. Watch out for copyright issues here!
20. Household insurance documentation - photos of valuables, slide show or CD, offsite storage
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