How to Make $100,000 a Year With Your Photography

Whether you are a professional or a hobbyist, it’s safe to assume that you’d love to make at least $100,000 a year with your photography. Chances are, you’ve already heard that the key to reaching this number is to have multiple streams of income. In this video, Evan Ranft offers an alternate path for making six figures a year.

Multiple streams of income are certainly important, particularly for anyone who is self-employed. Many people lost their primary source of income during the COVID-19 pandemic. Photographers whose sources of income included in-person workshops saw this revenue stream dry up for a year or more. Conversely, photographers who understood how to offer online workshops or even online photo shoots saw their income increase. In the video above, Evan begins by detailing his own multiple streams of income. These streams include photo shoots, a YouTube channel, sponsorships, Lightroom presets, and print sales. While this formula is working for Evan, he acknowledges that not every photographer is equipped to immediately implement multiple streams of income. For these photographers, there may be an easier solution.

Breaking down the math, if you want to make $100,000 per year, you will need to generate $8,000 per month or $400 per day for 20 days of the month. It is important to understand your value as a product and/or service provider when you look at these numbers. Photography is the product you are selling, and the more value you can provide with this product, the higher rates you can charge. Evan’s contention is that it is more difficult to sell a lower-value product to a larger number of people than it is to sell a higher-value product to a smaller number of people. Instead of seeking out 20 clients each month willing to pay $400 for your product, you should seek out 10 people willing to pay $800. Simply put, direct your energy to where the money is.

Evan believes that most photographers’ prices are too low. However, many photographers have no choice but to price their services as such because these photographers do not offer enough value to their clients. Some photographers offer nothing more than good images to their clients. Rather than just offering photographs, maybe you could give your clients some assistance on which images should be used on each of your client’s various social media platforms. Perhaps you could help your clients by writing captions for their social media posts. What if you assisted your clients with finding locations for photoshoots that match the colors, message, and feel of the client’s brand? Are you capable of facilitating a collaboration between this client and another client that you have worked with in the past?

With this strategy in mind, your first step in earning $100,000 in 2022 will be to put in the work to increase your skills so that you are offering a high-value product so that you can justify charging a high rate. An added benefit of this strategy is that by shooting fewer days of the year, you will free up time that can be used to create additional streams of income. As Evan states, this formula is not complicated, but it will require hard work on your part.   

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