How One Photographer Grew His Business to Six Figures Per Year

While jobs in the creative arts, like photography, are infamously difficult to make good money in, it is possible. In this video, Evan Ranft walks you through how he turned the income from his photography business from low to six figures in 8 years.

Perhaps it's because I'm English, perhaps it's how I was raised, but I am desperately uncomfortable with talking about money. In fact, to exemplify this, just last night one of my best friends and I were talking about money made from investments. We both knew when we had made certain investments and what the price of those investments are now, but we both skirted around saying any numbers for a good hour. It's deeply ingrained in me, at least.

The issue with this is when it comes to business. As a wise person once pointed out about employment: not discussing wages with people is how companies can keep their wages low. The same is true of running your own business in many ways, particularly as a sole trader in photography. I went into this career blind and not knowing how much I was meant to charge for services or even how much I should be making. I had to find these problems with my shins, so to speak.

This is why I appreciate when successful photographers, like Evan Ranft, go through the steps that got them to where they are today, even if they don't talk specific numbers. Back when I started, this is the exact sort of content I dearly needed.

Rob Baggs's picture

Robert K Baggs is a professional portrait and commercial photographer, educator, and consultant from England. Robert has a First-Class degree in Philosophy and a Master's by Research. In 2015 Robert's work on plagiarism in photography was published as part of several universities' photography degree syllabuses.

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2 Comments

Ah, this one again: talk and talk and talk. Why don't you get to the point for once? Modesty is an adornment, but you get further without it.

Btw: I started my professional IT business 1997 and from 0 up to 6 figures in the first year. You cannot live from your income if it takes you 8 years.

It's not really making 6 figures from photography though is it.
It's making 6 figures from a collection of different revenue streams. Good for him, that's great.
But that business model is a lot more niche than just photography.
How much money is he actually making from creating photos? I'd like to know, given he's saying he made 60k profit from 100k, I don't think he's shooting much. The profit margin on large commercial shoots like I do is way smaller.
Also one job can be north of a 100k...
Be good if these kind of videos could be made by people who actually work at the higher end of photography.