4 Ideas for Bringing in More Income as a Photographer During COVID-19
Finding ourselves in the middle of the COVID-19 outbreak can feel overwhelming and challenging. If you're a self-employed photographer and an entrepreneur, this may be a good time to think outside of the box and think of new ideas and opportunities to bring in more income while stuck at home.
But first! Change Your Mindset
Everything begins with a mindset change. I recently chatted to Viara Mileva on my Shine + Thrive podcast. She is a photographer whose background is in parent + child interactions and psychology, and she mentioned an interesting poll that Todd Herman, a business coach and peak performance mentor, did. He spoke to 29 top CEOs and found that they could be divided into three groups:
The Fear Focused
The Unfocused
The Strategy-Focused
The first group were worried a lot, preoccupied thinking about the future in a negative way, and used a lot of negative action words in their business. They tended to play the blame game a lot more than the others.
The second group was scattered, slightly in denial, and tended to have their heads in the sand. They would write things out, but waited for action to happen instead of taking action themselves. The language they used was filled with uncertainty.
The third group was very action-oriented, consuming less media than the other two groups, and the language they used was completely different, too. The words they used were “action” and “opportunity” and they didn't use as many negative words as the other two groups.
So I really want to encourage you to embrace the third type of mindset - be action-oriented and focus on strategy. Change your mindset to attract opportunities. Ask quality questions.
Instead of asking, “Why is this happening to me,” ask, “How can I be the best that I can be during this time for myself and for others?”
Create a mini online course, an online workshop or an education opportunity
Every single human has some knowledge that they can share with the world and that someone else needs or wants. Maybe you are ten steps ahead of someone and that person ten steps behind is eager to learn from you.
Especially, when it comes to photography. Most of the things you know may come naturally to you, but to someone else it's a blank page. Use this opportunity to teach and share your knowledge to help them.
It can be anything from basic entry-level photography to teaching the way you shoot or the way you work and communicate with your clients and wedding photography couples.
Anything that works well for you, is something that you can share. Create a mini online course or an online workshop and sell it for $50 or $70 or whatever you feel comfortable with. You can easily sell it on places like Gumroad where you can start off for as little as $10 a month.
2. Offer online mentoring sessions
To share your skills and knowledge online, you don't always need to create an online course. In this time of uncertainty and self-isolating at home, you can easily offer online mentoring sessions one-on-one or in small groups.
Again, this can be on any topic you feel comfortable teaching and sharing your knowledge on. And trust me, there are people out there who want to learn from you.
Head over to Instagram and ask people, “Hey, what's the one thing that you would really love to learn from me?” That's one of the easiest ways you can get that information straight from your audience.
Or you can straight up say, “Okay, guys, I'm offering one hour mentoring sessions on this topic. It costs X amount of money. Who's in?”
And I know you're probably wondering, where to start with pricing? Begin with whatever feels good to you. And then slowly, if more people are booking, you can always raise the price. As you get more experienced and you can start seeing the positive impact your mentoring sessions have on people, you can, again, raise your prices over time.
3. Offer prints, wall art, and albums
This can be a great time to reach out to your past clients and offer them a coupon code to buy prints from their online gallery or you can offer a special album price if they order by a certain date.
After all, isn't this a great time to work on those personal projects like hanging up prints at home and creating photo albums? It's definitely something I have planned for a while and I talked about wanting to create photo albums of my teenage years and early 20s in my Shine + Thrive podcast episode #9, where I spoke about my 2020 goals.
Furthermore, I love what Viara Mileva suggested in our conversation, “I would extend that to non-clients, too. If someone has decent images that they want to have as prints or in a photo album, you can edit the photos and put those in a little photo book for them. This way, you offer a service that you already normally do for your clients, but it opens up a whole new playing field. Someone might have a stack of digital photos somewhere and think to themselves, “I always wanted to get these printed, but I don't know how.” Then you as a professional photographer can offer editing those for them and preparing prints and/or a photo book.”
Viara also mentioned that at this time, we shouldn't make assumptions about people's spending ability and their needs/wants. “I think we assume that everybody right now is financially struggling, but we have to remember that there are many people who aren't - they have stable and secure employment or savings. So you shouldn't make an assumption about what someone can or can't afford or doesn't need.”
So especially if you are reaching out to past clients via email, make sure to clearly outline what you are offering and what the benefits are. Explain the service you are doing in a way that they can clearly see how it benefits them.
4. Sell stock photography or fine art prints through your online web store
Selling stock photography or fine art prints online is a nice opportunity for setting up a passive income source. There are numerous stock photography websites where you can upload your work.
I've been dabbling in Image Source for about a year and a half. I'll be straight with you, so far I've only made $1500 in that amount of time so on average I've made $100 per month of passive income via selling stock photography. And I have about 1000 images on there. So I'm not suggesting this as a way of immediate source of great income, but it's definitely worth giving it a go. Keep in mind that it's a process. I'm saying this from experience.
This is a good time for you to go back into your photography archives and pick out any photos that you can share. Start that passive income coming in slowly, but make sure to get the ball rolling. I've heard of photographers earning a full monthly mortgage through stock photography, so it's definitely doable.
Viara Mileva's Mindset Exercise:
In the end, I wanted to share with you a mindset exercise that Viara Mileva offered on our podcast episode since this is such a good time to start practicing it.
Write out 20 items of value that you bring to human beings. This can be anyone from your past customers to new clients. These can be small things like, “I smile at my clients” or “I have professional grade equipment,” or “I'm always on time.”
Write each of these 20 things in their own line creating a bullet list. Then read it out loud. And then add five more items. Read those out loud. And then add another two after that. Keep adding until you think you can't add any more. You should be left with 30 or so items of value that you bring through experience of serving people.
Pin it above your desk and read it out loud to yourself every chance you get.
Viara's background lies in science and since she's a psychologist-turned-photographer, she knows what she is talking about. In her own words, “I know this sounds kind of hokey, but if you do this, you will feel a huge difference and you will see how much value you bring. You will be convinced and once you are convinced, your clients will be convinced too. So then you can essentially offer whatever you like because you know that you do offer value to people, whether it's in person or digitally.”
I hope this helped you. If it did, please let me know by sending me a DM on Instagram (@saramonikaphoto).
If you know someone who would like this too, share this blog with them. You can also listen to the Shine + Thrive podcast episode I did with Viara Mileva here.
Love you guys and thank you so much for reading!
-Sara Monika